Laser 2001 & Salora Manager - official thread

[MADrigal]

In my opinion, the "wrong" sticker on Carlsson's Laser 2001 PSU is not a major issue. Maybe they simply mistyped the sticker, but the PSU was originally designed for 5-pin connector.

I think that we now have an "earlier" revision of the Laser 2001. If the owner will tell me the serial number, maybe we can discover more on this story.

I invited him to join this forum, and share pictures of his Laser 2001 with us.

[carlsson]

Since Finnish is the language of gods and kings, I spent a little time to browse through the Salora Manager manual kindly uploaded by our Finnish friends. Instead of running OCR on the PDF, I retyped the most important passages directly into Google Translate (don't laugh!) and got a lot of meaningful information in return.

From what I understand, the list of commands and functions looks something like this:

GR Puts the computer in graphic mode
TEXT Puts the computer in text mode
COLOR= fg, bg Changes foreground and background colours
PLOT x1,y1 TO x2,y2 ... TO x99, y99
UNPLOT x1,y1 TO x2,y2 ... TO x99,y99
CIRCLE (x,y),radius
RECT (x1,y1),(width,height)
HOME Clears the text screen
VPEEK (adr) Read data from VRAM
VPOKE adr,val Store data into VRAM

SOUND (p,d,v),(p,d,v),(p,d,v),(n,d,v,ch)
p = pitch between 0-255
d = duration between 0-255
v = volume between 0-15
n = 1 for periodic noise, 2 for pure noise
ch = channel 1-3 or noise

You don't have to specify all channels at once.

SGEN a,b,c,d
Send audio control data directly to the sound chip:

SGEN 159,191,223,255 to turn off all sound
SGEN 140,5,170,5 to set up ch1 = 679 Hz, ch2 = 694 Hz
and so on.

I think one needs to look up the SN76489 to fully understand what this means.

All the following commands and functions appear to work like in your average Microsoft Basic dialect, so only a few are explained:

END, NEW, LET, REM, PRINT, INPUT, GET, LIST
STOP, CONT BREAK = Ctrl-C
TRACE, NOTRACE, ON ERR GOTO For debugging, prints line numbers etc

IF .. THEN
FOR .. TO .. STEP .. NEXT
AND, OR, NOT
READ .. DATA, RESTORE
GOTO, GOSUB .. RETURN
ON .. GOTO, ON .. GOSUB
CLEAR Clears variables, the same as CLR in other dialects

There is no ELSE and unlike some other dialects, RESTORE can not take a line
number.

ABS, ATN, COS, EXP, INT, LOG, SGN, SIN, SQR, TAN
SPC, TAB, ASC, CHR$, LEN, LEFT$, MID$, RIGHT$, STR$, VAL

RND (X)
X>0 for new random numbers
X=0 for the same random number
X<0 to re-initalize the random number generator

DIM Can take arrays of up to 255 dimensions or even dynamic number of elements

PEEK (adr) Range -32768 to +32768
POKE adr,val Range -32768 to +32768
CALL adr Range -32768 to +32768

RAM (0)
Reports the number of bytes free, plus 16384.
If you write A = RAM(A$), the computer will garbage collect, free up memory and run a bit faster.

&
Transfers a value to a machine code routine at $03F4
Example: &NAME 100. I think this is equal to USR(x) on other Basics.

CLOAD Load from cassette
CSAVE Save to cassette
CRUN Load + Run
BLOAD Binary load, can take load address $xxxx
BSAVE $xxxx,$nnnn Saves $nnnn bytes from address $xxxx
BRUN Binary load + Run, can take load address $xxxx
STORE Record variable values on tape
RECALL Read variable values from tape
LLIST Send listing to printer
LPRINT Print a line of text to printer

To most part this looks like any standard Microsoft Basic version, with a few custom commands for graphics and specifically sound. The RAM(0) command looks like FRE(0) but with the additional feature of being able to collect garbage, which I'm unsure if I've seen before.

Too bad the ROMs are not yet dumped. They are soldered to the board in my machine, and I don't know a safe way to read them without risking damage. Perhaps one could BSAVE the ROM content, but since so far there is no known way to read Laser tapes on a PC, it would be a moot point. Perhaps one can write a Creativision program that will try to read data and store onto a static RAM chip, but it involves a bit of technical skills to go ahead.

[MADrigal]

Wow Anders, that's very useful, since we have access to Finnish and German manuals only - not English.

Thanks much for your contribution!

[carlsson]

Speaking of the German manual for the Laser 2001, I browsed through it a couple of weeks ago and found it covers different aspects and most importantly far less technical detail than the Finnish manual for the Salora Manager. It made me wonder if the English manual for the 2001 would be just as brief as the German one, and that Salora spent a little extra effort in producing a manual that even intermediate and advanced users would have some use of. Obviously it is far from a Programmer's Reference Guide or Technical Service Manual, but at least it contains a few gems. I suppose a little of the Creativision knowledge might apply too, since cartridge games can be run.

If only the ROM were socketed so they easily could be removed, dumped and put back into place. My desoldering skills are so awful that I won't even consider attempting to desolder anything on my Laser 2001.

[MADrigal]

Speaking of the German manual for the Laser 2001, I browsed through it a couple of weeks ago and found it covers different aspects and most importantly far less technical detail than the Finnish manual for the Salora Manager. It made me wonder if the English manual for the 2001 would be just as brief as the German one, and that Salora spent a little extra effort in producing a manual that even intermediate and advanced users would have some use of.

Yes Anders, I share that same opinion with you. I believe that Salora tried their best to sell the Manager and peripherals, and offered a great support to users. I believe that the Finnish manual was written by guys working at Salora and then sent to VTech for printing.

Obviously it is far from a Programmer's Reference Guide or Technical Service Manual, but at least it contains a few gems. I suppose a little of the Creativision knowledge might apply too, since cartridge games can be run.

Hm... the 2 BASIC's are very different, but maybe they share many "peek's & poke's" like the one used for keyboard/joystick management. I dont have a map of the CPU RAM handy, but I think it's quite close to the Creativision one.

If only the ROM were socketed so they easily could be removed, dumped and put back into place. My desoldering skills are so awful that I won't even consider attempting to desolder anything on my Laser 2001.

I would have no problem in asking some friend to desolder my Salora Manager BASIC ROM, but it's just a matter of spare time - I dont have much at this moment. But I'm planning that from a long time.

[carlsson]

I took a dive into my 2001 and found the shielding is soldered at five places. I saw some big chips soldered to the board, some on both sides of the same board!

This newly invoked interest is due to a thread on AtariAge where someone was looking for documentation about the Z80 series machines Laser 350, 500, 700, 750. They are not VZ/Laser 2xx compatible and the question was which other machine did VTech clone when they moved away from colour improved TRS-80. The owner of a Laser 700 looked inside and found some custom chips with VTL markings, of which some might be ROM or OTP EPROM and one seemingly a VLSI for graphics or so.

[MADrigal]

hm... i really never heard of laser 350, 700 and 750. what are they? pc-xt?

[carlsson]

No, successors to the Laser 200, 210, 220, 300 series:
http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=449

Maybe you remember the notice about the Creativision "Laser 500" is something completely different than the latter VTech Laser 500 computer.

[MADrigal]

Yep, I remember about the Laser 500 computer/Laser 500 Creativision thing, but I knew Laser 200/210 and 300/310 only.

Didn't know the Laser 500, 700, 350 and 750 were all "evolutions" of the Laser 200/300 series.

[carlsson]

Or well, it is not clear how much they have in common but the Z80. What surprises me however is the number of individually completely different technologies VTech produced in the short span of years, c:a 1981-87. I still wonder if the expansion bus is electrically compatible between all Laser models that have the same physical dimension, but I'd suppose not. It would have been great though if they made unified disk controllers, printers etc that would attach to any Z80 or 6502 design in the series.