The M23 Keyboard is assigned to I/O ports 0xE0 to 0xEF. A key-press will result in a value of 0x04, 0x08, 0x10, 0x20, or 0x40 on any of these ports. The physical location of the key determines which value can be read on which port (see schematic below). The M23 uses complex logic to determine what ACII character needs to displayed on the screen due to localization differences of the keyboards between the different countries the computer was released for (QWERTY vs AZERTY).

The SORD M23 comes with 128kByte of RAM, and has various configurations.

• M23 mk I - Dual 3.5" Floppy Disk Drives.
• M23 mk III - Dual 5.25" Single Sided QD disk drives.
• M23 mk V - Dual 8" disk drives
• M23 mk X - Single 8" Winchester 20MByte Hard Drive
• M23 mk 41 - Dual 5.25" Double Sided High Density disk drives.

There is also an M23EX version of the computer, this is basically the same as the M23 mk 41, but in an M68 case.

One of the strengths of the SORD M23 machines was that the engineers gave the machine an Arithmetic Processing Unit (APU). This is an AMD am9511 co-processor used for math processing. The AMD 9511 is a floating point unit, designed to work with a variety of processors. It performed arithmetic and trigonometric operations with 16-bit and 32-bit fixed point numbers, and 32-bit floating point numbers. It could also convert floating point to fixed point numbers and vice versa. This math co-processor is heavily used by the software called PIPS III. PIPS stands for Personal Information Processing System. PIPS is something in-between a database and a spreadsheet.

SORD was a Japanese computer company founded by Takayohi Shiina in 1970 when he was 26 years old. Initially the company wrote software for the Digital PDP series of microcomputers, but later on in he 1970's branched out into hardware production. The name SORD is a contraction of SOftware/haRDware, reflecting the dual focus of the company.

The company was known for producing a wide range of computers and peripherals, including personal computers, workstations, servers, and storage systems. SORD was particularly successful in the Japanese market, where it was able to compete with larger companies such as IBM and Fujitsu. One of their most successful product lines was the SORD M200, a personal computer that was popular with businesses and consumers in Japan. SORD also developed a number of innovative technologies, such as the first Japanese-language word processor and the first Japanese-language computer game.

The M200 was released in 1977, followed by the M100 and various other versions of the M100/M200 series, plus the multi-user M223 and M243 computers.

The SORD M23 followed in 1981 and become one of the most popular SORD computers. It was one of the first to see significant use outside Japan, and was even relatively popular in New Zealand. The M68, a curious dual 8/16 bit computer using both 68000 and Z80A CPUs, was releaased in Japan in 1983.

On the software side, PIPS - Personal (or Pan) Information Processing Sytem was released in 1980. This package was 'not quite' a spreadsheet in the Visicalc/123 sense of the term, and 'not quite' a database, but combined features of both into an easy to understand business package. This was followed by PIPS-II in 1981, PIPS-III in 1982 and a complete rewrite (by a team led by kiwi Peter Hyde) as 4G-PIPS in 1986. I still have a copy of the MSDOS version of 4G-PIPS - it will run on any PC capable of running 16 bit applications, although because it expects all its folders to be off the root directory a little fiddling with SUBST (or running in DosBox) is advisable!

Unfortunately Japanese business culture does not look kindly on the entrepreneur. Shiina-san was approached by a larger Japanese corporation in 1983 and advised to sell. He didn't - and in 1984, on the back of turnover of 35 billion yen and profit of 2 billion yen SORD found itself struggling with suppliers and the banks. SORD was sold to Toshiba in 1985 (Toshiba had no part in the problems from 1983).

Under Toshiba, SORD went on to produce additional hardware such as the M68MX (with no Z80A) and M343SX-II multi-user computer and new versions of PIPS, a series of high performance IBM compatible machines and systems based on Alpha but now SORD (known as Toshiba-TOPS) primarily deals with embedded systems.

In 2008 Takayoshi Shiina was running Proside Corporation.

More info: Sydney Morning Herald Article

• 1977 - M200 - Smart Home Computer
• 1978 - M200 mark II - Personal Computer
• 1978 - M100 - Consumer Home Computer
• 1979 - M100 ACE - Professional version of M100 with attached FD
• 1979 - M200 mark III - Z80A CPU High Speed Business PC
• 1979 - M223 mark IV - Winchester Small Professional Computer with disk
• 1980 - M200 mark V - Small professional computer
• 1980 - M243 mark - Super PC Series
• 1981 - M416 - i8086 & i8087 16-bit micro-host computer series
• 1981 - M23 - Handheld business computer series
• 1982 - M343 - i8086 & i8087 16-bit kanji office computer series
• 1983 - M243EX - z80B Multi business PC series
• 1983 - M68 - M68000 + Z80A dual CPU multi-function computer series
• 1983 - M343SX - Simultaneous Multiplexing System series
• 1984 - IS-11 - Book-sized computer series
• 1985 - M68MX - Low price version of the M68 series
• 1985 - M343SX-II - Upgraded version of the M343SX series
• 1988 - SR-3300 - 32-bit personal workstation

Here are examples of how a business could set up a SORD-net network. Computers were connected via the SNS RS-232C serial port, and could use servers for printing, network storage and dial-up modems.

The Z80 quickly became popular in the personal computer market, with many early personal computers, such as the TRS-80 and Sinclair ZX80, using the Z80 as their central processing unit (CPU). It was also widely used in home computers, such as the MSX range, SORD, and the Amstrad CPC, as well as in many arcade games. Additionally, it was also used in other applications such as industrial control systems, and embedded systems. The Z80 was widely used until the mid-1980s, when it was gradually replaced by newer microprocessors such as the Intel 80286 and the Motorola 68000.

The Z80 microprocessor was developed by Zilog, a company founded by Federico Faggin in 1974. The Z80 was released in July 1976, as a successor to the Intel 8080. It was designed to be fully compatible with the 8080, but also included new features such as an improved instruction set, more powerful interrupts, and a more sophisticated memory management system.

The Z80 quickly became popular in the personal computer market, with many early personal computers, such as the TRS-80 and Sinclair ZX80, using the Z80 as their central processing unit (CPU). It was also widely used in home computers, such as the MSX range, SORD, and the Amstrad CPC, as well as in many arcade games. Additionally, it was also used in other applications such as industrial control systems, and embedded systems. The Z80 was widely used until the mid-1980s, when it was gradually replaced by newer microprocessors such as the Intel 80286 and the Motorola 68000. The design was licensed to Synertek and Mostek as well as the European SGS.

The Z80s instruction set is binary compatible with the Intel 8080, so that 8080 code such as the CP/M Operating System and Intel's PL/M compiler for the 8080 can run unmodified on the Z80. The Z80 had many enhancements over the 8080 such as 16-bit data movement instructions, block copy and block I/O instructions, single bit addressing of all registers, IX/IY offset registers, better interrupt system and a complete duplicate register file for context switching during an interrupt.