VZ200:About

My interest in computers had been piqued by a family friend who had previously worked for Tandy and owned a TRS-80. One school holidays I ran through a self-paced computer programming course on his TRS-80 and was hooked. On top of that, in Year 11 of High School I was able to take a computer course using Australia's own Microbees.

My first computer was a VZ200 purchased circa 1984. Besides the price, one of the contributing factors was a software library provided by my brother's work experience office - where tape swapping and copying was a common occurrence! I quickly got into programming in BASIC (as well as playing those pirated games...).

My school mate from Karuah, Phillip Smith, also purchased a VZ200 and we often spent Saturday afternoons working together on either electronics or software projects.

As my family holidayed near Brisbane every Christmas holidays, one year I convinced Dad to take us into a meeting at the home of John CE D'Alton (of LE'VZ).

Once at Uni I attended the Hunter Valley VZ Users Group a few times. There I met the famous (in VZ circles at least) Joe Leon who kept the journal going for many years. In the end I sold all my VZ gear to him as time had passed the good old VZ by.

Fast-forward 15 years or so and by then the internet had became mainstream. Out of a sense of nostalgia I did a search on VZ200 and was surprised to find quite a few hits. I decided to build up a new collection of VZ's starting with one I picked up on eBay from an Adelaide seller.