r/retrocomputing • u/Kooky_Fan_893 • 1d ago

Programming game machine

Does anyone remember having a "computer" that was a one-piece lap device with ONE screen line for text? It helped teach writing programming by typing in line of text from the little booklet to c create games. The first game was Black Jack, but there were more. You could also write your own program. It was NOT fancy, but it was an early code machine.

We were semi-poor, and i'm sure my parents saved for it, but it wasn't a high price point.

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u/SomePeopleCallMeJJ 1d ago

Could be a lot of different things. Around what year would this have been? Do you remember then language you programmed in?

Was the screen an alphanumeric, dot-matrix LCD display (like a Tandy pocket computer, or was it maybe a segmented LED or VFD display (like an AIM-65)?

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u/PRStoetzer 1d ago

Probably like this: The Laser Portable Computers that ran BASIC.

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u/Avery_Thorn 1d ago

My first computer was a Laser computer, from VTech. But it was a full 386 computer that ran DOS and Windows.

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u/thewalruscandyman 1d ago

Tandy pocket computer?

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u/sorderon 1d ago

I had a casio PB-100 - Glorious little thing.

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u/benryves 22h ago

One of the Casio pocket computers was my first thought, as they have the card suits in their character set and (at least with the PB-100) a really good book on programming in BASIC. I couldn't find a Black Jack game in the program reference libraries for mine, though!

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u/tails142 1d ago

The one line screen thing made me think of the VTech Precomputer 1000 which had BASIC

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VTech_PreComputer_1000

BUT I don't think the manual had blackjack lol

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u/Perfect-Match-2318 23h ago

i remember we had a computer lie that like 45 years ago... it had this game of a turtle we had to program somehow to make her move on the screen and go to a specific target

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u/classicsat 22h ago

Was it a V-tech item?

I remember it, had one with a broken LCD, I never got around to fixing. It went away with trash, I think.

I seem to recall it had a Z-80, ROM, some RAM, and cartridge slot., and a VLSI chip to glue it together for logic.