Here is the first of a great family. It is the successor of the Sharp X1 family, shipped with a unique square screen monitor, fist in a grey case, then in black.
Instead of using the Zilog Z80, it uses a powerful Motorola MC 68000. This computer (and all its family) has great features (look at the emulator), it was more powerful than the other 68000 computers at this time (Atari ST or Amiga 500) : more colors or more hardware sprites, hardware scrolling, genlocking, perspective or playfields (up to 16) .
Unfortunately, it was never marketed outside Japan where it was and still is very very popular ! Too bad, I'm sure it would have a great success !! A very great range of games were developed for the X680x0 serie and the best arcade conversions were done on this computer.
It runs under Human 68K, an operating system which looks like CP/M 68 or MSDOS and uses a graphic user interface called VS.
Notice that the development is still active on that computer, several OSes have been ported on the X68000, the most famous are Minix and Unix NetBSD and all the GNU tools and there are some projects under development : XNeptune (a Ethernet card) or Ko-Windows (a 'NextStep-like' graphic environment).
Please consider donating your old computer / videogame system to Old-Computers.com or one of our partners from anywhere in the world (Europe, America, Asia, etc.).
I agree the Sharp X68000 was a killer when you see some of those arcade identical games. Despite its technical achievement i really dont believe it would have succeeded as a game machine outside the asian countries. $3000 USD at the time was way beyond what ANY reasonable person would pay for a game machine$ games were great but not that great. Granted the X68K system was capable of more but at that time home computers had to be IBM compatible or you were dead. Lets face it, people were getting their fix from significantly cheaper NES, Sega, and even cheap IBM Compatibles with VGA graphics.
Saturday 25th August 2018
Taylor S (Canada)
The Sharp X68000 was the top dog in it''s day of 68k based home computers and it better be since it was hella expensive. One could purchase a few Amiga 500s for the price of one entry level X68000.
Saturday 7th January 2012
Laserdisc (USA)
square screens are cool
Friday 20th May 2005
j (ny)
NAME
X68000
MANUFACTURER
Sharp
TYPE
Home Computer
ORIGIN
Japan
YEAR
1987
KEYBOARD
Full-stroke keyboard
CPU
Motorola MC68000
SPEED
10 MHz
CO-PROCESSOR
Unknown
RAM
1 MB (up to 12 MB)
VRAM
512 KB graphic + 512 KB text
ROM
1 MB
TEXT MODES
Unknown
GRAPHIC MODES
256 x 240 / 256 x 256 / 512 x 240 / 512 x 256 / 512 x 512 / 640 x 480 / 768 x 512 / 1024 x 1024 / 128 sprites (16 x 16 dots)
COLORS
65535 (16 colors in 1024 x 1024 to 65K in 512 x 512)
SOUND
FM Sound (Yamaha 2151 : 2 channels / 8 octaves stereo) + PCM (OKI MSM6258V : 4 bit mono)
I/O PORTS
Joystick(2), Audio IN / OUT, Stereo scope, TV Control, NTSC Video Image I/O, Expansion (2 slots), External FDD, SASI, RS232
