Sharp X68000Z announced

[Jinroh]

I am not a super fan of Japanese PCs (they are not Atari 😄) but thought this was the cool announcement, given it is some love to retro PCs.

A Mini Sharp X68000. Looks like it'll include a keyboard and mouse as well. No concrete details until October 8th, but pretty neat, had some good arcade ports.

Now someone needs to give the Falcon this kind of treatment, so I can actually get one. 😛

 

[RickR]

Wow, that's pretty neat.  I wonder if we'll eventually see a remake of an early "Windows 98 with 3dfx graphics card" PC.  It would be fun to have a system to play a lot of the early 3D PC classics. 

[Jinroh]

I remember actually seeing something like this in development, but I think there was some complication.

I imagine this could be done easy enough with an X86 compatible CPU and an FPGA to emulate the 3DFX chipset though. I imagine that is something that will be happening soon enough though. 😄 Would be fun if Microsoft themselves bankrolled that, and it came installed with a legit Win9x build.

We need a readily available TOS system too. The Firebee is great, but who can get one? 😢 Some company with lots of money needs to get on either developing it further or making a new one. Jeff Bezos loves the ST line. He needs to put his money where his mouth is. 😛

[RickR]

9 minutes ago, Jinroh said:

We need a readily available TOS system too.

YES!  I hope it happens. 

[DegasElite]

52 minutes ago, Jinroh said:

The Firebee is great, but who can get one? 😢

Right. I keep emailing them about that, and I don't get a response. It might have folded.

[Jinroh]

4 hours ago, DegasElite said:

Right. I keep emailing them about that, and I don't get a response. It might have folded.

Yes I am not sure either. I mailed them a few weeks ago too, but no response either.

Back on topic, it would be neat if the X68000Z would have an open platform for development. Would be cool to see more coders on more 68000 based machines. 😄

 

Edited September 14, 2022 by Jinroh

[DegasElite]

This is true. But, is this a computer or an emulated console? It looks like a computer, but you never know nowadays. There's the Amiga 500 Mini, but that is emulation. It's not a full-fledged Amiga computer, from what I understand. But, I could be wrong. I don't know.

[Jinroh]

Yes, I suppose we will find out in October. 😄 Would be ideal to be a PC for sure. 

Either way if it is open I am sure people would enjoy to play with it, not so much for me, but hope other companies are watching. 😉

[Jinroh]

If you are interested in poking around the X68000Z you can apply for a free beta test Hacker's Edition Unit.

HACKER'S EDITION recruitment (zuiki.co.jp)

They will be selecting some of the applicant later in a few weeks. A lot of you are talented developers that may like this! 😄