reComputer 1000

I should say that my original plan was a lot less grand than what you see before you now.

Originally I was simply going to put a 5-inch LCD into the original bezel, with a Raspberry Pi (perhaps even a Zero) mounted directly to the back of it. I even planned on using a Teensy microcontroller to tap into the original keyboard matrix, since it was already had a full-sized 60% layout. Sure there were a couple weird keys, but I thought it would add to the charm.

But plans started changing once I started actually working on the project. One of the first issues was the keyboard -- it was terrible. Seriously, like the worst keyboard I've ever used. It had to go, but at that point, I wasn't really sure how it'd pull it off.

It also became clear that a 5-inch display would be pretty miserable for any real computing. In addition, the angle of the original bezel meant you'd have to look down while you were using it. This wasn't terrible (at least it wasn't completely flat like the TRS-80 Model 100), but I overall it seemed using the machine in this configuration would be uncomfortable enough that it would never be anything more than a novelty.

So the keyboard had to go, and the screen needed to be moved and made larger. So much for the "weekend project" I thought this would be.

Back in 2019 I picked up a VTech PreComputer 1000 from eBay for the purposes of doing a teardown, mainly because I was attracted to its retro design. But in digging into the hardware I was surprised to find that it was a lot more capable than the educational kid's computers we see today.

Teardown: VTech PreComputer 1000

For one thing, it actually had a 4 MHz Z80 processor onboard. For reference, desktop machines like the TRS-80 were using slower versions of this same chip less than a decade previously. It would be like if you bought your daughter a Barbie computer for $100 in 2022, and it turned out the thing was packing a third generation Core i5.

But more than that, it had a BASIC interpreter onboard. Sure there were the expected math and spelling games, but once you outgrew those functions, you could actually write your own software for the PreComputer. Combined with a full-sized QWERTY keyboard, it was obvious that this thing was no simple toy.

Now of course, modern computers don't look much like the PreComputer 1000. But what if they did? What if, instead of being relegated to toy status, a device like this was instead a state-of-the-art mobile computer of the late 80s? After all, the PreComputer was marketed as a "computer trainer" for tweens -- so who is to say the real thing couldn't have more closely followed its lead?

So I decided to follow that idea to its logical conclusion, and turn the PreComputer into a fully functional computer that could have existed in an alternate 1988. As it would represent a re-imagining of the computer paradigm, I could think of no better name for this hybrid machine than the reComputer 1000.