Source: Micro – Issue Number 64 – October 1983
VersaWriter is a drawing tool that was released for the Apple II and other computers sometime in 1983. It consists of software and a tablet with an articulating arm to aid in drawing or tracing. All of this could have been yours for the low price of $299. Accounting for inflation, that would be more than $770 today.
The software that went along with VersaWriter was fairly sophisticated despite being written (mostly?) in BASIC. You could use this for art, drafting type drawing, diagrams and tracing other things easily. Unfortunately, the very high price of this product meant that few could afford it. As far as artistic uses, there were other far cheaper products that worked just as well and if you were doing professional drafting or something similar I would imagine there were better prodcuts for that as well. In other words, the market for this product was probably very small.
Although this ad emphasizes the Apple II, it also mentions availability for the Atari 8-bit and DOS based PCs. I’m not sure if there are any price differences but if there were it was likely a higher PC price. The ad also mentions additional software products other than what comes with the tablet that adds additional functionality. There are three Expansion Packs mentioned, the last of which adds animation capabilities. However, I don’t know if these were all released.
There isn’t much use for this product today except as a historical curiosity. I imagine that this item complete with software and hardware is probably quite rare so it may be of interest to collectors. The above ad is from the October 1983 issue of Micro: The 6502 Journal.
