Philips P2000

The Philips P2000 home computer was Philips' first real entry in the home computer market, after the Philips Videopac G7000 game system (better known in the U.S. as the Magnavox Odyssey2) which they already sold to compete with the Atari 2600 and similar game systems.

Basically the P2000 was a Z80 based home computer that used a Teletext display chip to produce the video picture and a small Dictaphone cassette recorder for mass storage. It seems that Philips used components they already produced for other markets (Televisions and Dictaphones) to quickly design a small computer system.

They also copied the ROM cartridge system from their Videopac G7000 game system. One of these cartridges contained Microsoft BASIC.

Although the Teletext video chip permitted a quick entry into the home computer market, it was also the major weakness of the P2000. Using the Teletext standard in itself was not a bad idea because it did support eight colors and rudimentary graphics. But unlike later entries in the home computer market which also supported a Teletext display mode, such as the venerable BBC computer and the Oric Atmos, the P2000 did not support a high resolution display mode. This made it very difficult to develop interesting games for it.

As a result, the P2000 had only a limited success, and Philips later replaced it with their MSX machines.

The P2000T was a run-of-the-mill, semi-portable CP/M computer that had nothing in common with the P2000 except for its Z80 processor.

The P2000 was produced in Austria.