In the 1970s Dr. David Chung, inventer of the F8 processor, and Dr. Albert Yu, from Intel's integrated circuits department, created Umtech (Universal Microcomputer Technology). By 1977 they had created the VideoBrain computer system. Soon after UmTech became the VideoBrain Computer Co.

The VideoBrain was designed to be a simple computing appliance for the average person to use. As such it relied more on cartridge based programs than tapes or disks.

The library of Carts for this system contains mainly utility and educational programming with a few games.

Specifications

NOTE: Some information may be inaccurate, as all current numbers are from recent hacking on an available unit. Not system documantation.

CPU	Fairchild F8 @ 1.79MHz
Video chip	2 Custom VLSI chips
Text Modes	None. Simulated 16x7?
Displayable Chars.	59
Programmable Chars.	0 or infinate.*
Graphic Modes	160x400 positional grid for objects.
Colours	16. 8 Primary and 8 Pastel
Sprites	16 Objects. Max Size 256x64 monochrome, No overlapping
Sound	One voice. Range unknown.
Controls	4 removable analog joysticks with 2 fire buttons.
Ram	1K
Rom	4K

Main Unit

The unit is a rather large black wedge with brushed aluminum trim.

There are three progams resident within the unit.

1. TEXT: Enter a message on the screen.
2. COLOR: Display all 16 colours in rows.
3. CLOCK: Date Time clock. Y2k compatable :) No battery back-up. :(
4. ALARM: Beep when CLOCK reaches set time.

ALARM is just a setting for CLOCK, so I count them as one.

The keyboard dosen't have the standard number row. Instead, they are imbeded like on a modern laptop. The Enter key [RUN/STOP] is also the space bar, and the Backspace [ERASE] key is under the M.

Graphics

VideoBrain graphic modes are a bit of a mystery at the moment.

What we Think we know:

• There are no bitmap or text modes.
• There are 16 Sprite like objects.
• They can be positioned anywhere on a 160x400 grid.
• Each can be one of 16 colours.
• They can NOT overlap!
• Pixels can be 1 or 2 scan lines tall
• Bit images for 59 text characters are in ROM. Although the BIOS text routines can't be used to draw any other characters, there is nothing stopping cart routines from drawing there own characters onto the screen.
• The Text in the built in programs is displayed using 7 objects displaying 16 characters each.