The Sharp X68000, often referred to as the X68k, was a home computer released only in Japan. The first model was released in 1987, with a 10MHz Motorola 68000 CPU, 1MB of RAM and no hard drive; the last model was released in 1993 with a 25MHz Motorola 68030 CPU, 4MB of RAM and optional 80MB SCSI hard drive. RAM in these systems was expandable to 12MB though most games and applications didn't require more than two. No written copyright on source page, belive the image can be used. ... Sharp Corporation (シャープ株式会社 Shāpu Kabushiki Kaisha) (TYO: 6753) is a Japanese electronics manufacturer, founded in 1912. ... Apple IIc Hi class Although there is no rigid definition, a microcomputer (sometimes shortened to micro) is most often taken to mean a computer with a microprocessor (µP) as its CPU. Another general characteristic of these computers is that they occupy physically small amounts of space. ... 1987 (MCMLXXXVII) is a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Motorola NYSE: MOT is a global communications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, a Chicago suburb. ... The Motorola 68000 is a CISC microprocessor, the first member of a successful family of microprocessors from Motorola, which were all mostly software compatible. ... Intel 80486DX2 microprocessor in a ceramic PGA package A central processing unit (CPU), or sometimes simply processor, is the component in a digital computer that interprets and executes instructions and data contained in software. ... Random access memory (sometimes random-access memory), commonly known by its acronym RAM, is a type of computer storage (in practice only computer chips) whose contents can be accessed in any (i. ... Typical hard drives of the mid-1990s. ... 1993 (MCMXCIII) is a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar and marked the Beginning of the International Decade to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination (1993-2003). ... Motorola 68030 Processor from a Macintosh IIsi The Motorola 68030 is a 32-bit microprocessor in Motorolas 68000 family. ... SCSI stands for Small Computer System Interface, and is a standard interface and command set for transferring data between devices on both internal and external computer buses. ...

Operating System

The X68k ran an operating system developed for Sharp by Hudson, called Human68K, which features commands very similar to those in MS-DOS (typed in English). Pre-2.0 versions of the OS had command line output only for common utilities like 'format' and 'switch' while later versions included forms-based versions of these utilities, greatly improving their usability. At least three major versions of the OS were released, with several updates in between. Other operating systems available include NetBSD for X68030 and OS-9. In computing, an operating system (OS) is the system software responsible for the direct control and management of hardware and basic system operations. ... Hudson Soft is a Japanese publisher and developer, founded on May 18, 1973. ... Microsofts disk operating system, MS-DOS, was Microsofts implementation of DOS, which was the first popular operating system for the IBM PC, and until recently, was widely used on the PC compatible platform. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... NetBSD was the second free software / open-source version of the BSD Unix-like operating systems to produce a formal release, after 386BSD. Noted for its portability, it is often used in embedded systems and as a starting point for the porting of other systems to new architectures. ... For Mac OS 9, see Mac OS 9. ...

Early models had a GUI called "VS"; later ones were packaged with SX-WINDOWS (not to be confused with Microsoft Windows, whose interface is very different). A third GUI called Ko-Windows existed; its interface was similar to Motif. These GUI shells could be booted from floppy disk or the system's hard drive. Most games also booted and ran from floppy disk; some were hard disk installable and others require hard disk installation. Gui is short for Guilherme or Guilhermo or an iteration of that, in English it translates to Will. ... Microsoft Windows is a series of operating environments and operating systems created by Microsoft for use on personal computers and servers. ... Motif (or capitalized MOTIF) is a graphical widget toolkit for building graphical user interfaces under the X Window System on UNIX and other POSIX-compliant systems. ...

Since the system's release, Human68k, console, and SX-Windows C compiler suites and BIOS ROMs have been released as public domain and are freely available for download. This article is about the software. ...

Case Design

The X68000 featured two soft-eject 5.25" floppy drives, or in some of the compact models, two 3.5" floppy drives, and a very distinct case design of two connected towers, divided by a retractable carrying handle. This system was also one of the first to feature a software-controlled power switch; pressing the switch would signal the system's software to save and shutdown, similar to the ATX design of modern PC's. The screen would fade to black and sound would fade to silence before the system turned off. ATX form motherboards became increasingly popular because of their advantages over older AT motherboards. ...

The system's keyboard, although rather poorly designed overall, had a mouse port built into either side. The front of the computer had a headphone jack, volume control, joystick, keyboard and mouse ports. The top had a retractable carrying handle (only on non-Compact models), a reset button, and a Non-Maskable Interrupt (NMI) button. The rear had a plethora of ports, including stereoscopic output, FDD and HDD expansion ports, and I/O board expansion slots. A Non-Maskable Interrupt (NMI) is a special type of interrupt that can not be ignored by standard interrupt masking techniques. ...

Display

The monitor supported 15 and 31kHz with up to 65,535 colors and functioned as a cable-ready television (NTSC-J standard) with composite video input. It was an excellent monitor for playing JAMMA compatible arcade boards due to its analog RGB input and low refresh timing. NTSC-J is a videogame region which covers Japan. ... JAMMA is an acronym, standing for Japanese Amusement Machine Manufacturers Association. ...

Disk I/O

Early machines used the rare Shugart Associates System Interface (SASI) as their hard disk interface; later versions adopted the industry-standard small computer system interface (SCSI). Per the hardware's capability, formatted SASI drives could be 10, 20 or 30 megabytes in size and could be logically partitoned as well. Floppy disks came in a couple of different formats, none of which are natively readable on other platforms, though software exists that can read and write these disks on a DOS or Windows 98 PC. SCSI stands for Small Computer System Interface, and is a standard interface for transferring data between devices on a computer bus. ...

Expansion

Many add-on cards were released for the system, including networking (Neptune-X), SCSI, memory upgrades, CPU enhancements (JUPITER-X 68040/060 accelerator), and MIDI I/O boards. The system has two joystick ports, both 9-pin male and supporting Atari standard joysticks. MSX controllers work natively and Super NES controllers could be used in conjunction with the adapter that came with Super Street Fighter 2. Musical Instrument Digital Interface, or MIDI, is a system designed to transmit information between electronic musical instruments. ... MSX is the name of a standard for home computers in the 1980s (see also The Home Computer Era in the History of computing hardware). ... The European SNES design is identical to the Super Famicom. ...

Arcade at home

Hardware-wise, it was very similar to arcade hardware of the time. It supported seperate text RAM, graphic RAM and hardware sprites. Sound was produced internally via Yamaha's then top-of-the-line YM2151 FM synthesizer and a single channel OKI MSM6258V for PCM. Due to this and other similarities it played host to many arcade game ports in its day. Games made for this system included Parodius, Final Fight, Street Fighter 2, Ghosts 'n Goblins, Akumajou Dracula (Castlevania, later released on the Sony PlayStation as Castlevania Chronicles), and many others. Many games also supported the Roland SC-55 and MT-32 MIDI modules for sound as well as mixed-mode internal/external output. Computer hardware is the physical parts of a computer, as distinguished from the computer software or computer programs and data that operate within the hardware. ... Pulse-code modulation (PCM) is a digital representation of an analog signal where the magnitude of the signal is sampled regularly at uniform intervals, then quantized to a series of symbols in a digital (usually binary) code. ... Centipede by Atari is a typical example of a 1980s era arcade game. ... In computer science, porting is the adaptation of a piece of software so that it will function in a different computing environment to that for which it was originally written. ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... Final Fight (Japanese: ファイナルファイト Fainaru Faito) is a classic beat em up series from Capcom. ... Street Fighter II: The World Warrior (1991) was a highly popular and immensely successful arcade game created by the Japan-based company Capcom. ... Ghosts n Goblins (魔界村 Makai mura, or Demon World Village, in Japan) is a classic arcade game by Capcom. ... Castlevania is a video game series, created and developed by Konami. ... The original PlayStation was produced in a light grey colour; the more recent PSOne redesign sports a smaller more rounded case. ... Akumajō Dracula is the name of the 1993 Castlevania game released in Japan on the Sharp X68000 home computer system. ... Roland EXR-3 Keyboard Roland Corporation (TYO: 7944) is a Japanese manufacturer of electronic musical instruments, electronic equipment and software. ... The Roland MT-32 is a MIDI synthesizer module first released in 1987 by the Roland Corporation. ...

External link

• Japanese Computer Emulation Centre
• Human68k Xperiment