The Sord M5 - A game computer for the British market?
The Sord M5 is a computer launched in 1982 by the Sord Computer Corporation for the Japanese market. It was sold for a short time as the CGL M5 in the United Kingdom and was reasonably popular in Czechoslovakia, where the M5 was one of the first affordable computers available to the general public.
In November 1982, when the Sord M5 was first scheduled to debut in the UK, the UK home computer market was becoming uncomfortably congested. More to the point, it was dominated by British firms: Sinclair, Acorn and Dragon, and Tangerine offshoot Oric and Camputers were both gearing up to release home micros of their own. Oxford’s Research Machines dominated the education micro market.
The Japanese computers had not made any impact in the UK, Only Sharp and Epson had made some name for themselves in the business market, but they did not venture into the home computer market. There was a bit of British pride at work: British computer makers were not going to let the Japanese Electronics firms destroy the UK home micro industry the same way they had done with the hi-fi market.
Sord's marketing for the UK focused on playing games. Rather than programming, or running a business, the Sord M5 was marketed to run games using a convenient ROM cartridge slot at the top of the machine.
The Sord M5 has very similar specifications to the MSX computers, but was not MSX compliant itself. It had all the hardware components such as the Programmable Sound Generator and the Video Display Processor but not the MSX firmware. The main memory for programming was only 4KByte, and 16KByte was available as VRAM.
The sord had a slot for ROM cartridges and a few programming language cartridges were available. The BASIC-I cartridge for Integer arithmic only, the BASIC-G cartridge for Graphic and sound functions, and the BASIC-F cartridge for Floating point arithmetic. There was also an applications package that came on the FALC cartridge.
History of SORD computing
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
Timeline of Computer Development at SORD
- 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
Sord Network
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.
TMS9918 Series Video Display Processor (99n8, 99n9, 91n8, 91n9)
The TMS9918 is a series of video display controllers (VDC) manufactured in 1979 by Texas Instruments, also refered to as 'Video Display Processor' (VDP). The TMS9918 and its variants were used in the ColecoVision, CreatiVision, Memotech MTX, MSX, NABU Personal Computer, SG-1000/SC-3000, Spectravideo SV-318, Spectravideo SV-328, Sord M5, Tatung Einstein, Texas Instruments TI-99/4, Casio PV-2000, Coleco Adam, Hanimex Pencil II, and Tomy Tutor.
Key Features:
- 256x192 pattern based color pixels per screen
- 16 different colors
- 8-bit memory mapped CPU interface
- No need for DMA, CPU can access VRAM
- 32 single color Sprites per screen (4 per scanline)
Variants:
- TMS9918A - 60Hz output, NTSC video
- TMS9928A - 60Hz output, YPbPr video
- TMS9929A - 50Hz output, YPbPr video
- TMS9118 - Different RAM than TMS9918A, otherwise identical
- TMS9128 - Different RAM than TMS9928A, otherwise identical
- TMS9129 - Different RAM than TMS9929A, otherwise identical
Zilog Z80 CPU Family
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.
Source: WikiPediaVRAM: 16kB Sound Chip SN76489 Sound 3 voice channels, 1 noise channel Display Chip TMS9918 Display 40x24 text
32x24 16 color text, pattern based
256x192 16 color, 2 color per 8 pix. Best Text 40x24 Best Color 16 colors (2 per 8 pixels) Best Graphics 256x192 in 16 colors Sprites 1 color, 16x16, 4/scanline, 32 total System OS BASIC-F Original Price ¥49,800