VideoBrain Family Computer

The VideoBrain Family Computer was a 1977 computer by Umtech Incorporated, designed by David Chung and Albert Yu. It used a Fairchild F8 microprocessor at a speed of 1.79 MHz. It had 1 KB of RAM, due to the high cost of RAM at that time, one of it's major flops is that the operating system was APL/S instead of more common BASIC operating system. It had a 36-keyed Full-Travel keyboard but although it used a QWERTY layout, it had a non-standard key layout. Another of it's major flops was that it only used cartridges to store programmes, these cartridges could have up to 12 KB. It used a custom UV-201 graphic chip with a display of 384x336x16 of graphics and 128x56x16 of semigraphics. The VideoBrain had 4 built-in programs, a text editor, a clock, a countdown timer and a Color Bar generator. It had 2 hardware peripherals, the Expander 1 and Expander 2, the Expander 1 was a VideoBrain interface to various I/O devices, which allowed users to connect a cassete deck for saving or loading data or a printer, among more systems, the Expander 2 was a VideoBrain 300 baud acoustic modem that you can plug into the VideoBrain. Because the VideoBrain was discontinued so quickly {1977-1979}, it had 25 titles on cartridge such as... 1. APL/S 2. Timeshare 3. Music Teacher 4. Math Tutor 5. Wordwise 1 6. Wordwise 2 7. VideoArtist 8. Lemonade Stand 9. Gladiator 10. Pinball 11. Tennis 12. Checkers 13. Blackjack 14. Demonstration 15. Fiancer 16. Money Manager 17. Musicanship 18. Number Cross 19. France In The Old Regime 20. Challenge Racer 21. Music Programmer 22. Programmable Football 23. Computer's Life 24. Budget System 25. Information Manager. The System was sold for 500USD or 1100USD on the department store Macy's, depending on acessories chosen, but was quickly discontinued as you have read, the VideoBrain failed to achieve commercial viablity due to a number of reasons. The VideoBrain's unfriendly and weird keyboard was one of them, the VideoBrain forced user to adopted the less known APL/S OS, finally... The VideoBrain software library was struggling to reach a key audience, most programs were for professional, semi-professional or educative. Perhaps the largest nail on the coffin was that it lacked proper marketing and hardware availablity. Public understand of computers was not that same has today, costumers didn't simply understand the benefits of having a computer, also... The VideoBrain was sold in mail-order outfits and a brief retailing in Macy's, in contrast... Videogame consoles were available con toy stores and market, allowing to outsell the VideoBrain... So the VideoBrain was discontinued early and was a FAILURE