The VideoBrain

The VideoBrain.

Background/History:
The Video Brain Family Computer is yet another system that blurs the line between home computer and video game system. Developed by a startup company called Umtech, the system was based the Fairchild F8, the same microprocessor as the Fairchild Channel F. It featured a kilobyte of RAM and four kilobytes of ROM, and was capable of 16 color graphics. The VideoBrain was marketed as a "family" home computer, and it featured video games as well as productivity software. The system featured four built in programs: a text editor, clock, countdown timer, and color bar generator. Additional software was available on cartridges that could hold 12 kibibytes (about 12.3 kilobytes) of data. The system shipped with one cartridge, a program called Financier that could be used to solve financial equations.

What Makes It Obscure?
The system had several hard to use features. The system did not use BASIC, the common computer language of the time: it used APL/S, forcing users to adopt a programming language that was not in common use. The keyboard made text entry a tedious task. In addition: the system was poorly marketed. It was primarily available through mail order, although Macy's did sell the system briefly. The price on the system was also steep: at introduction, $500 ($1,815 in today's dollars) got you a system with three cartridges. Educational and video game cartridges were $20-40 (now $73-146). Only fourteen programs were ever released.
The system, released in March 1978, was one of the few systems to be discontinued before the end of the 1970s. Production ended in spring 1979.
The Channel F, the first programmable video game console and the system that donated its microprocessor to the VideoBrain, was introduced over a year earlier - November 1976 - and ended production in 1981.