Salora Fellow was basically the same machine as the Video Technology Laser 200/210 just with a different case in colors that matches Salora's other electronics.
Salora is a Finnish televison manufacturer and they mainly sold this machine in Scandinavia, mostly in Finland. Technically they are the same as the Vtech machines and the machine still says Vtech Laser 200 when booted.
The machine sold reasonably well because of Salora's good reputation, but was soon crushed by bigger companies like Commodore and Spectravideo with their better machines. Lack of software was an important factor of course. The machine was also a bit out of date on arrival.
The machine wasn't really localized as the Scandinavian Ä,Ö and Ĺ letter were missing from the keyboard. Adding them to the rubber keys must have been too difficult or expensive.
There were two known mainboard revisions:
• The one shown on the more-pictures section is identical with the original Laser 200 and very badly made with lots of wires, hot glue and a small sister board.
• The second one is of much better quality, as good as big company machines like Commodore, no sister board and only one long wire running through the whole board. There is also a switch on the underside of the machine to choose between color/black&white output. Maybe Salora got tired of fixing broken Fellow's and demanded better quality from Vtech?
Salora also distributed the Laser 2001 as the Manager. It was meant to be the high-end computer of Salora's computer range.
Thanks to Taneli Lukka from Finland for this information.
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I had this as a kid, mainly because it was a failure and was sold of cheap so we could afford it, all my friends had either Commadores or MSX-type machines, it was around 1983. It was crap, had to write all programs on Basic, the buttons stuck, no games where available, but I learned programming.
Thursday 5th August 2021
Jouni
Go Socialism!
Monday 18th June 2012
Jorg
NAME
Fellow
MANUFACTURER
Salora
TYPE
Home Computer
ORIGIN
Finland
YEAR
1984
END OF PRODUCTION
1985
BUILT IN LANGUAGE
Microsoft Basic
KEYBOARD
QWERTY, 45 rubber keys Basic instructions and graphic symbols
CPU
Zilog Z80 A
SPEED
3.58 MHz
CO-PROCESSOR
Motorola 6847 (video processor)
RAM
6 KB - Up to 64 KB with memory addons
VRAM
2 KB
ROM
16 KB
TEXT MODES
32 x 16, 8 colors (Mode 0)
GRAPHIC MODES
128 x 64, 4 colors (Mode 1)
COLORS
8
SOUND
1 voice, 3 octaves
SIZE / WEIGHT
29 x 17 x 4 cm / 800 gr
I/O PORTS
Tape-recorder (600 bauds) RF video out Composite video out (DIN) Memory upgrade port Expansion port
