Homelab Homelab
BraiLAB Plus 77
brailabplus77

The BraiLAB Plus-77

This is the second edition of the BraiLAB computer, which was the HomeLAB-4 for the blind. This computer was renamed the BraiLAB Plus-77, which had two extra buttons on the left side of the computer that were easy to find on the touch. The keyboard also got four dedicated cursor keys which made navigating using the keyboard much easier.

When the text-to-speech extension was created for the HomeLAB computer, a married couple working at KFKI, András Arató and Teréz Vaspöri, created a voice synthesizer and used it to extend the HomeLAB IV and create a talking computer that would turn any text, wether it was a BASIC program or Hungarian text, into speech, with all the correct stressing of sentences implemented. This computer was known as the Brailab.

Brief history of HomeLAB

In the spring of 1982 József Lukács and his younger brother Endre decided to create a computer that was accassible to the Hungarian youth. They designed a computer, the Homelab II, whiich was manufactured under the name Aircomp 16. The computer was pdoduced by a small company called Personal GT. The later models of the Homelab computers were produced by the Color Industrial Co-operative in Dombóvár.

The Aircomp 16 was expensive to produce and the brothers ran out of funding. Ultimately when Homelab III was produced, the brothers released the documentation and basic units like the PCBs so users could purchase the computer as a kit, and assemble their own at home. The Homelab computers were built in large numbers by amateurs at home, based on the circuit diagrams published in the Mikroszámítógép Magazin.

Technical Details
Released 1983 Country Hungary Brand HomeLAB Type Homelab Homelab Name BraiLAB Plus 77 CPU Class Z80 CPU Zilog Z80 Memory RAM: 16kB
RAM max: 64kB
VRAM: 4kB shared
Display Chip none Display 64x32 monochrome text Best Text 64x32 text Sprites none System OS BASIC in ROM Storage External Tape
External Links 🌐
History of HomeLab
A brief history of the HomeLAB computers from Hungary.