FM-7

FM-7
Manufacturer Fujitsu
Type Personal Computer
Release date November 1982 (1982-11)
Introductory price ¥126000 (Japan)
Discontinued April 1984 (1984-04)[1]
Units sold 220,000[1]
Media Cassette tape, 5¼-inch floppy disk
Operating system Fujitsu Disk Basic , OS-9, FLEX
CPU 2x MBL 68B09 clocked at 2MHz
Memory 64KB RAM, 48KB VRAM, 48KB ROM
Display 8 colours at 640 x 200 pixel resolution, 262144 colours at 320 x 200 pixel resolution
Input Keyboard, Joystick
Dimensions 43.2 x 28.5 x 10.2
Weight 4.5 kg
Predecessor FM-8
Successor FM Towns
Related articles TRS-80 Color Computer

The FM-7 ("Fujitsu Micro 7") is a home computer created by Fujitsu, first released in 1982, only sold in Japan. It is a stripped down version of their earlier FM-8; during development, the FM-7 was known as the "FM-8 Jr.".

Although it is known as a lower cost model, most notably removing its (expensive) bubble memory technology, the FM-7 was given a more advanced sound synthesizer, leading to a strong uptake among the hobbyist computer market in Japan and making it a more dominant system than the FM-8.

This model competed primarily with the NEC PC-8801 and Sharp X1 series of computers in the early 1980s. It was succeeded by the FM-77 series in 1984 (which were backwards compatible with the FM-7), and later the 32-bit FM Towns in 1989.

The FM-7 is 6809-based, similar to the TRS-80 Color Computer by Radio Shack; some software is compatible with both systems.

Hardware

F-BASIC

The included "F-BASIC" is an enhanced version of Microsoft's Color BASIC. F-BASIC's additions to the standard Microsoft CoCo BASIC include the Japanese character set (katakana, and a few kanji), block graphics, three-voice music, the ability to have graphics appear on the default text screen, and some neat commands such as being able to take any string and print it out in various sizes (from tiny to huge) and directions (forward, backward, up, down, etc.).

While there are a multitude of new commands on the FM-7 not found in Microsoft's CoCo BASIC, it is worth pointing out that the commands that ARE found in both machines operate in exactly the same fashion. Both Microsoft and Fujitsu share the copyright on the BASIC. There are also strings for TIME$ and DATE$, which access a temporary built-in internal clock, though if the power is turned off, the time and date are lost.

While the BASIC 'EDIT' command works the same as on the Radio Shack CoCo, the cursor position is important on the FM-7: there is a small keypad on the upper-right of the FM-7 with cursor-control keys (arrows, INSERT & DELETE), and wherever you decide to position the cursor, it will move it there, and affect whatever is underneath it.

Models

There were several models of the computer:

References

  1. 1 2 小林紀興 (1987). 富士通の大逆襲計画 [The big counterattack plan by Fujitsu] (in Japanese). 講談社. p. 95. ISBN 4061928074.
  2. ↑ Larry Green (2005-04-08). "The Fujitsu Micro FM7 - Larry Green's Homepage at Nausicaä.net". Retrieved 2009-03-02.
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