The VTech Laser 200 is an 8-bit home computer from 1983, also sold as the Salora Fellow (mainly in Fennoscandia, particularly Finland), the Seltron 200 in Hungary & Italy, the Smart-Alec Jr. by Dynasty Computer Corporation in Dallas, Texas for the USA, the Texet TX8000A ( United Kingdom), the Dick Smith VZ 200 (in Australia & New Zealand), and the VTech VZ 200 (in the United States & Canada).

The machine ran basic games on cassette such as Hoppy (a version of Frogger), Cosmic Rescue (Scramble), VZ Invaders (Space Invaders), Dawn Patrol (Chopper) and Moon Patrol.

[citation needed] It gained a measurable following in countries, where it was supported by the distributor, where Sinclair Research was too disorganised to have any impact.

Due to Dick Smith Electronics' extensive advertising throughout Australia and New Zealand, the computer gained large popularity.

[3] The "Dick Smith"-badged VZ 200 was successful in Australia, where it proved popular as a first computer.

[4] By 1984, a Dick Smith Electronics catalogue announced that over 30,000 units had sold within the first 12 months.

In Australia, it was bought mostly to learn programming; the only other widely available system in the same price bracket being the Commodore 64.

[5] The VZ200 had little impact in the UK where it sold at a similar price to the 16 kB ZX Spectrum.

At its UK launch, Texet claimed that the £98 (equivalent to £418 in 2023) TX8000-branded version was the cheapest colour home microcomputer on the market.

However, this was not enough to ensure its success against the dominant ZX Spectrum and similar machines already on sale.

[6] An improved version known as the VTech Laser 310, or the Dick Smith VZ 300 featured a full travel keyboard and 8K ROM software based Floppy Disk Controller, was released in 1985 and continued until 1989.

The connections consist of a port for an unregulated DC power supply (the voltage regulator is on the PCB), a stereophonic earphone jack for a cassette recorder, an RF modulated video output, an edge connector which is a printer and disk drive port, an edge connector that is a joystick port, and a composite monitor output (NTSC 60 Hz output in North America, PAL 50 Hz output in the British Commonwealth and continental Europe).

As the VZ200 is limited to only 2 kB of video memory since only 4 kB of memory in total was initially available, the screen is limited to only 16 lines down, making the total number of pixels in text mode 256 × 128 pixels.

An internal latch is used for cassette output, to drive the piezoelectric loudspeaker attached to the casing, and to control two signals for the 6847 video processor.

Since the latch has two bits driving the internal piezo speaker, there is the ability of a software driven volume control - half-volume and full-volume.

As numbers of users grew, so did the number of home-made kits which were on offer, which included a Speech synthesizer, Music Synthesiser that used the Texas Instruments SN76489AN chip, a real world relay interface, EEPROM programmer, data logger, 300 baud MODEM, full 101 keyboard, 128 Kb sideways RAM extension and a RTTY Ham radio kit.

In 2020 Ben Grimmett from BennVenn Electronics designed and built 50 SD card readers for enthusiasts, which gives the computer a total of 128 Kb of banked RAM, and, depending on memory card, typically a minimum of 2 gigabytes of storage space.

Also based on a Zilog Z80A CPU with a slightly updated 16k ROM version, it was driven by a television colour burst (3.54 MHz) crystal.

ETI magazine in Australia published an electronic circuit which would enable VZ300 owners to use all 16 kB of the VZ200 expansion.

Both computers supported colour within the internal language interpreters (BASIC, Assembler), however, the output video from the NTSC and PAL circuitry only supplied black and white signals.

The known examples of the Seltron are unique with its own configuration layout of the motherboard; quite different from that of the other family of computers.

The Seltron's motherboard contained the same custom VZ300/Laser310 single packaged GA003 and GA004 chipsets (which replaced discrete VZ200/Laser200-210 components), though the design eliminated the need for the GA008 (clock register and DRAM controller) that is used in the 16 Kb VZ300/Laser310.

In 1985, the first branch of Video Technology was opened in the United States at 390 Convention Way, Redwood City, California.

This location served as the main office, mail order center, kit assembly area and retail store.

A friendly agreement was reached with "SANYO" at the time by Video Technology in Hong Kong.

During the early years of the VZ200 and Laser210 throughout Germany saw a large number of the computers being sold, and as such, many user groups formed.

The Floppy disk drive was marketed and sold throughout Germany (1984) nearly two years before they were even advertised in Australia (end of 1985).

Once again, a number of drive units ended up in Australia long before Dick Smith got onboard.

With both of their releases in Germany, England, USA, Italy, Australia, New Zealand and a few other countries, commercially based software titles grew and were distributed throughout various outlets in their home county syets store fronts throughout Australia and New Zealand sold many titles, including educational and graphical games, finance programs and various software utility tools, most of which have been found and transferred for the use in the various emulators.

Dick Smith Electronics ran a program buying software from local programmers and selling them through their stores for $12 a cassette.