what the hell is this?

[bluejay]

found this online. Found it pretty interesting bc it had a commodore petscii keyboard. I wonder if it has anything to do with commodore.

 

[wierd_w]

images are broken. Referral denied.

 

Try uploading straight to atariage.

[bluejay]

Here does it work now?

Edited June 5, 2020 by bluejay

[rpiguy9907]

All it had were Character Graphics like the PET. The first model came out in 1979 so obviously they copied the graphics characters directly from Commodore. 

[carlsson]

That is a Sharp MZ-721, or a similar model from the MZ-700 series. It has pretty much zero to do with Commodore.

 

Sharp to begin with had the MZ-80K, MZ-80A and moved onto the MZ-700 and MZ-800 series, all Z80 based. They were huge on the Japanese market and did fairly well in parts of Europe too, not sure if they ever were seen in USA but generally Japanese computer brands don't seem to have had much impact on the American market.

[bluejay]

I thought the keyboard kinda reminded me of the VIC-20 with the yellow function keys except it has light gray 128 key caps. I thought maybe it was a clone of the VIC or c64. Thanks for the info!

[carlsson]

As for brands featuring graphic symbols on the keyboard, obviously the PET 2001 from 1977 was one of the first, perhaps the very first. While that model had some following in Japan, I'm not sure if it can be established that Sharp was inspired by that in particular or if it was becoming a trend on the wider scale.

 

Then again Michael Tomczyk has admitted that Commodore got inspired by the fuction keys on the NEC PC-8001 (1979) which is why they included four function keys on the VIC-1001 (1980) and VIC-20 (1981), so I suppose every manufacturer picked ideas from eachother.

[carlsson]

By the way, thanks for raising this topic as it caused me to look a little more. I found that NEC released a limited edition (500 pcs?) of the "PasocomMini PC-8001" last fall, more or less a Raspberry Pi with custom shell, preloaded with 16 games by HAL Labs from before that company even was formed.

 

https://www.siliconera.com/pc-8001-mini-with-16-classic-titles-announced-by-nec-pc-developed-by-hal-laboratory/

 

At first I thought it was a prank article but as far as I can tell, it is genuine and probably fits well with how crazy the Japanese are about special edition items. Supposedly HAL were part of a PasocomMini (Sharp) MZ-80C in May 2017 as well, which clearly was a Pi inside a case with a built-in fake screen but again, professionally made with shipping box and everything, not just a homemade job. Things like these go unnoticed in rest of the world, and frankly most buyers would want more value for money.