The Aster CT-80, an early (1982) home/personal computer developed by the small Dutch company MCP, was sold in its first incarnation as a kit for hobbyists. Later it was sold ready to use. It consisted of several Eurocard PCB's with DIN 41612 connectors, and a backplane all based on a 19-inch rack configuration. It was the first commercially available Dutch personal/home computer. The Aster computer could use the software written for the popular Tandy TRS-80 computer while fixing many of the problems of that computer, but it could also run CP/M software, with a big amount of free memory Transient Program Area, (TPA) and a full 80×25 display, and it could be used as a Videotext terminal. Although the Aster was a clone of the TRS-80 Model I it was in fact more compatible with the TRS-80 Model III, and ran all the software of these systems including games. It also had a built in speaker which was compatible with such games software.
The Atari ST is a line of home computers from Atari Corporation and the successor to the Atari 8-bit family. The initial model, the 520ST, saw limited release in April–June 1985 and was widely available in July. The 520ST is the first personal computer to come with a bitmapped color GUI, using a version of Digital Research's GEM released in February 1985. The 1040ST, released in 1986, is the first personal computer to ship with a megabyte of RAM in the base configuration and also the first with a cost-per-kilobyte of less than US$1.
A floppy disk or floppy diskette is a type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined with a fabric that removes dust particles from the spinning disk. Floppy disks are read from and written to by a floppy disk drive (FDD).
MSX is a standardized home computer architecture, announced by Microsoft and ASCII Corporation on June 16, 1983. It was initially conceived by Microsoft as a product for the Eastern sector, and jointly marketed by Kazuhiko Nishi, then vice-president at Microsoft and director at ASCII Corporation. Microsoft and Nishi conceived the project as an attempt to create unified standards among various home computing system manufacturers of the period, in the same fashion as the VHS standard for home video tape machines.
The Zip drive is a removable floppy disk storage system that was introduced by Iomega in late 1994. Considered medium-to-high-capacity at the time of its release, Zip disks were originally launched with capacities of 100 MB, then 250 MB, and finally 750 MB.
MSX BASIC is a dialect of the BASIC programming language. It is an extended version of Microsoft's MBASIC Version 4.5, adding support for graphic, music, and various peripherals attached to MSX microcomputers. Generally, MSX-BASIC is designed to follow GW-BASIC, released the same year for IBM PCs and clones. During the creation of MSX-BASIC, effort was made to make the system flexible and expandable.
The X68000 is a home computer created by Sharp Corporation, first released in 1987, sold only in Japan.
Electone is the trademark used for electronic organs produced by Yamaha. With the exception of the top end performance models, most Electones are based on the design of the spinet electronic organ. Current models are completely digital and contain a variety of sounds, effects, and accompaniments, on top of the ability to store programming data onto memory devices.
Mavica was a brand of Sony cameras which used removable disks as the main recording medium. On August 25th 1981, Sony unveiled a prototype of the Sony Mavica as the world's first electronic still camera.
The Sharp MZ is a series of personal computers sold in Japan and Europe by Sharp beginning in 1978.
The Korg i3 is a keyboard instrument introduced by Korg in 1993. Known as an "Interactive Music Workstation", the i3 broke new ground for Korg, and defined a new type of instrument - the professional auto-accompaniment workstation. Contrary to popular belief, it was not Korg's first foray into the realm of auto-accompaniment - it had a minor hit in 1985 with the SAS-20, a home keyboard with built-in speakers.
Yamaha SY77 is a 16 voice multitimbral music workstation first produced by Yamaha Corporation in 1989. The SY77 is a synthesizer whose architecture combines AFM synthesis, AWM2 for ROM-borne sample-based synthesis, and the combination of these two methods christened Realtime Convolution and Modulation Synthesis (RCM). The same technology was also packaged in a rack-mounted module released simultaneously, the TG77.
A ROM cartridge, usually referred to simply as a cartridge or cart, is a removable memory card containing ROM designed to be connected to a consumer electronics device such as a home computer, video game console or, to a lesser extent, electronic musical instruments. ROM cartridges can be used to load software such as video games or other application programs.
A Video Floppy is an analog recording storage medium in the form of a 2-inch magnetic floppy disk used to store still frames of composite analog video. A video floppy, also known as a VF disk, could store up to 25 frames either in the NTSC or PAL video standards, with each frame containing 2 fields of interlaced video. The video floppy also could store 50 frames of video, with each frame of video only containing one field of video information, recorded or played back in a "skip-field" fashion.
The Spectravideo SVI-738 X'Press is an MSX1 compatible home computer manufactured by Spectravideo from 1985. Although compatible with the MSX 1.0 standard, it incorporates several extensions to the standard ; many are hardware-compatible with the MSX 2.0 standard but the system as a whole is not, leading to it being referred to as an "MSX 1.5" computer.
The Philips NMS-8250, was a professional MSX 2 home computer for the high end market, with two built in floppy disk drives in a "pizza box" configuration. The machine was in fact manufactured by Sanyo and it is basically the MPC-25FS with a different color.
Amiga support and maintenance software performs service functions such as formatting media for a specific filesystem, diagnosing failures that occur on formatted media, data recovery after media failure, and installation of new software for the Amiga family of personal computers—as opposed to application software, which performs business, education, and recreation functions.
A floppy disk is a disk storage medium composed of a disk of thin and flexible magnetic storage medium encased in a rectangular plastic carrier. It is read and written using a floppy disk drive (FDD). Floppy disks were an almost universal data format from the 1970s into the 1990s, used for primary data storage as well as for backup and data transfers between computers.
The Panasonic FS-A1WSX released in 1989 was the last MSX2+ made by Panasonic. It was the successor of FS-A1WX and incorporated few changes like S-Video output, no tape support, color printer support and an improved A1 Internal Cockpit software with a Kanji color word processor.
