On Wed, 2 Jul 1997, Ken Marshall wrote:
> I was just given a Sony SMC-70 last weekend by a friend of my son's that is
> moving. The machine has 3.5" single-sided floppy disks, both black & white
> and RGB video outputs, an RS-232 interface, parallel interface, and a DB-25
> connector labeled "external drives". It also has a "supercharger" unit
I have an SMC-70 as well; unfortunately, I have neither an OS nor the
floppy drives for mine. The few pieces of information that I have found
about this machine are that it was (supposedly) the first mass-produced
computer to use 3.5 inch floppy disks and that it was used as a part of a
video editing controller that Sony produced in the early '80s. The
floppy disk claim does make some sense, since the 3.5 inch format was
developed by Sony.
A few more interesting things about this machine:
- The power supply is located in the rear portion of the case, which is
mounted on tracks and movable. Moving the power supply away from the main
portion of the case reveals a ribbon cable with several 50-pin socket
connectors. This ribbon cable terminates at the 50-pin Centronics
connector on the back of the unit. Does anyone have a description of this
bus? I'm assuming that there were options available that fit into this
area and extend the length of the unit, somewhat like the options that can
be connected to the IBM PC Convertible.
- There is a switch on the side of the unit that selects the startup
device, which can be either ROM or disk. I'm assuming that the boot ROM
was an optional product. In any case, mine doesn't have a boot ROM.
Does anyone know if the SMC-70 floppy drives are the same as (or
compatible with) any of the other drives that are made by Sony, such as
the 400k SSDD drives used in the Macintosh 128k/512k?
If anyone is interested, I can snap a few pictures of the SMC-70 tonight,
put them on the Web, and post the URL.
--
Scott Ware s-ware_at_nwu.edu
Received on Wed Jul 02 1997 - 12:06:33 BST