---
title: VTech Socrates
---

The *Socrates* is a home video game console released by VTech in 1988.

The following ICs are on my Socrates board:

* a Z80 CPU clocked at 3.58Mhz (TMP Z84C00AP-6)
* two 32KB DRAM chips (Sharp LH2464-12)
* a custom ROM containing 6 built-in games (VTech 27-00817-002-000)
* a Toshiba A/V controller (VTEL 27-0769 TC17G032AF 0248)
* an I/O controller (TMP 42C40P 1844)

There are slight differences between versions of this board, such as a
compatible Z80 clones, and of course a different graphics chip for the German
*Prof. Weis-Alles* and the French *Professeur Saitout*, which use PAL and
SECAM video respectively.
The speech synthesizer module appears to have used a Toshiba TC88802AF.

The *Socrates* uses an RF modulator for video output, but this can be easily
bypassed to composite A/V, as documented by [modelrail.otenko].


## Sources

* [source code for the MAME implementation](https://git.redump.net/mame/tree/src/mame/drivers/socrates.cpp)
  - includes some useful documentation about the *Socrates*' hardware, as well
    as the *I.Q. Unlimited* and *Video Painter* which shared a similar
    architecture.
* [modelrail.otenko's Composite mod][modelrail.otenko]
* [Team Europe's flash cartridge][team-europe]
* [play the Socrates on the Internet Archive](https://archive.org/details/socrates_library)

[modelrail.otenko]: https://modelrail.otenko.com/retro/vtech-socrates
[team-europe]: https://team-europe.blogspot.com/2019/01/vtech-socrates-yeno-professor-weiss.html