This has to be one of the most clever old/vintage computer things I've seen for awhile...
Basically, instead of a rigid hardware bus (fixed metal traces on a PCB motherboard), it uses a soft, flexible multi-pin cable with multiple connectors -- as its bus!
Brilliant!
Yes, these would be frequency-limited because they couldn't be designed with the same precision as the buses on the circuit boards today, but for older computers running in the lower Mhz regime, this would not have been a problem.
And yes, you could argue that the S-100 bus had cable versions of it, and SCSI was a bus extension, and both of these would be valid arguments, but I've never thought of using a soft multi-pin cable as an actual low-Mhz early computer bus -- until watching this video.
That brings back memories. After releasing the SMC-70, Sony released a model called the SMC-777. In Japan, commercials featuring Seiko Matsuda were frequently broadcast, and it sold reasonably well. However, because it struggled to grow in the consumer PC market, I recall that they entered the MSX market.
> Why didn’t Sony become a major PC manufacturer after this?
I remember reading about it in magazines when it launched but at ~$1500 for the base model at launch (without monitor) and still ~$1000 18 months later, for consumers it just couldn't compete with the $600-$800 Commodore 64 and Atari 800. In 1983 >$1,000 was a non-starter for amatuer hobby users, plus there weren't many game titles for it.
While CP/M was popular with the early IMSAI / SOL / S-100 homebrew hackers, it was never very relevant for most mass consumer hobbyists. CP/M was really disk-centric and in the early 80s floppy drives weren't within reach for the '2nd Wave' broader consumer hobby market. We got our first computers (C64, Atari 800, TI 99/4a, Radio Shack Coco) envisioning cartridge & cassette usage plugged into a TV we already had through an RF modulator. If you could afford it, the component RGB output of the Sony would certainly have looked incredible but in the early 80s most consumers were still a few years away from even seeing their first RGB monitor in person. No local store had ever even had one on display, so we didn't really know what to make of it. To us, Composite Video was the esoteric "better looking" output vs RF to your old TV. :-)
The SMC-70's price and capabilities were a better fit for business users but by '83, MS-DOS and "PC-Compatible" were clearly 'the future' for business users and CP/M was on the way out.
At a guess I'd say that the spec wasn't quite competitive enough at the price it was pitched.
Consider that the C64 was also launched in 1982 for a much cheaper price and was available in non-NTSC regions too, so would have had a bigger software library available to it.
Many people can put up with less convenience with peripherals if you're paying an order of magnitude less up front.
Even the software on cassette and 5.25" disk would have been so much cheaper to distribute than the newly launched 3.5" disks (which were much better).
The video covers how CP/Ms big problem was that the disk formats weren't the same between machines, doubly true for this Sony which used new 3.5" disks. So all the existing CP/M software had to be specifically re-released for this machine, which caused a chicken and egg problem (who is going to release software for a machine nobody is buying because there is no software for it)
The MS-DOS world solved the problem by everyone just cloning the IBM hardware down to the disk format.
Digital Research had GSX, which provided a rich set of graphics primitives. Sony would need to offer a device driver or, alternatively, make the console/terminal emulate a graphics terminal such as the DEC VT-240 (and GSX would use a Tek4014 or ReGIS backend).
A lot of CP/M machines had graphics-capable built-in displays. Unfortunately, publishing software in machine-native media was a real chore back then, a bit like in the 1990's, where we had a "Unix version of NetScape" which was actually 27 slightly different versions for 27 different operating systems and binary architectures.
Kind of, because while MS-DOS was compatible between PCs, CP/M depended pretty much on what 8 bit machine you had, and like UNIX required compilation from source for proper compatibility.
FTL Modula-2 for example, had several low level portability modules depending on which CP/M machine you were actually using.
MS-DOS was “mostly” compatible across different machines but there were non-PC MS-DOS machines with different disk controllers and media recording formats, giving them better capacity or performance. Only machines that followed the IBM PC recording formats would be media-interchangeable.
Since the PC used off-the-shelf components, it was tempting to be compatible, but some cursed machines tried to be different.
I’m not sure how compatible are floppies from the Victor 9000 or Epson QX-10, but I know the Sanyo 550 (?) and the Mindset, which were not quite PC-compatibles could interchange media with a PC.
They had too expensive machines that just didn't do enough to justify the extra cost. They also liked to do weird proprietary stuff, like a lot of their sub-notebooks from the late 90s/2000s are pretty awesome but they'll have stuff like the CD-ROM/Floppy drive will only connect to like 3 models using some unique connector you'll never find.
> Why didn’t Sony become a major PC manufacturer after this?
There was an HN post recently about the USA and Microsoft intervening to prevent Japan from getting too far ahead in PCs, combined with some of Japan's own mistakes.
I often joked, back then, that MSX was a brilliant effort to persuade Japanese computer manufacturers to invest in a family of nearly identical 8-bit systems so that they could compete in price rather than features.
I saw another video a few months ago that talked about Japan’s attempt to enter the US market. I think it might have been Asianometry.
I think it talked more about MSX. By the time it came to the states it was already competing with other better established things like Commodore. And then once the IBM PC became the big thing they really didn’t have anything special to offer. It was just another set of machines that, well built well, weren’t really any different.
Racism and protectionism probably played into it some, given the time period. But mostly their offerings weren’t as unique here. So many computers weren’t practical in Asia since they didn’t support any of the local character sets so at home they weren’t competing that much with those.
So in the end none of the brands really succeeded. They became a huge place to manufacture PCs for a long time, but it was almost always under someone else’s name.
Building a microcomputer was pretty easy. Getting everyone to write software for it was very hard. Everyone tried to build an incompatible rent seeking fiefdom. Most of them failed. Then the relentless price competition of the clones finished them all off.
I love this thing so much. It has such great cyberpunk vibes with those chunky expansion modules. I can imagine a pixel-art video game where you update your in-game computer's capabilities by acquiring and plugging in these blocks into your ever-expanding system bus. It's so freakin' cool
I have one of these from an interactive exhibit. The exhibit predated my time at the company. I think it was a common form factor based around the s-100 bus.
I also have the documentation and cut sheets. How incredible rare? I’m getting ready to shed all the mass produced computers I have. Didn’t realize this was a gem. I admit I never saw another one.
This is from the time when Made in Japan meant cheap copy of things. Sony stole this Dark-Brown-Green + Grey color scheme from Olivetti. It was on all prof equipment like Tv-cameras and Beta-recorders.
This has to be one of the most clever old/vintage computer things I've seen for awhile...
Basically, instead of a rigid hardware bus (fixed metal traces on a PCB motherboard), it uses a soft, flexible multi-pin cable with multiple connectors -- as its bus!
Brilliant!
Yes, these would be frequency-limited because they couldn't be designed with the same precision as the buses on the circuit boards today, but for older computers running in the lower Mhz regime, this would not have been a problem.
And yes, you could argue that the S-100 bus had cable versions of it, and SCSI was a bus extension, and both of these would be valid arguments, but I've never thought of using a soft multi-pin cable as an actual low-Mhz early computer bus -- until watching this video.
Anyway, great video!
That brings back memories. After releasing the SMC-70, Sony released a model called the SMC-777. In Japan, commercials featuring Seiko Matsuda were frequently broadcast, and it sold reasonably well. However, because it struggled to grow in the consumer PC market, I recall that they entered the MSX market.
Here's an in-depth write-up of the hardware, software, manuals, variants, release prices and other info:
https://zzxio.com/about-us/sony-smc-70/
This is really cool, thanks for sharing.
The expansion design was surprisingly advanced for 1982. Why didn’t Sony become a major PC manufacturer after this?
> Why didn’t Sony become a major PC manufacturer after this?
I remember reading about it in magazines when it launched but at ~$1500 for the base model at launch (without monitor) and still ~$1000 18 months later, for consumers it just couldn't compete with the $600-$800 Commodore 64 and Atari 800. In 1983 >$1,000 was a non-starter for amatuer hobby users, plus there weren't many game titles for it.
While CP/M was popular with the early IMSAI / SOL / S-100 homebrew hackers, it was never very relevant for most mass consumer hobbyists. CP/M was really disk-centric and in the early 80s floppy drives weren't within reach for the '2nd Wave' broader consumer hobby market. We got our first computers (C64, Atari 800, TI 99/4a, Radio Shack Coco) envisioning cartridge & cassette usage plugged into a TV we already had through an RF modulator. If you could afford it, the component RGB output of the Sony would certainly have looked incredible but in the early 80s most consumers were still a few years away from even seeing their first RGB monitor in person. No local store had ever even had one on display, so we didn't really know what to make of it. To us, Composite Video was the esoteric "better looking" output vs RF to your old TV. :-)
The SMC-70's price and capabilities were a better fit for business users but by '83, MS-DOS and "PC-Compatible" were clearly 'the future' for business users and CP/M was on the way out.
At a guess I'd say that the spec wasn't quite competitive enough at the price it was pitched.
Consider that the C64 was also launched in 1982 for a much cheaper price and was available in non-NTSC regions too, so would have had a bigger software library available to it.
Many people can put up with less convenience with peripherals if you're paying an order of magnitude less up front.
Even the software on cassette and 5.25" disk would have been so much cheaper to distribute than the newly launched 3.5" disks (which were much better).
> so would have had a bigger software library available to it.
The SMC-70 could run CP/M software. CP/M was the MS-DOS of its time.
The video covers how CP/Ms big problem was that the disk formats weren't the same between machines, doubly true for this Sony which used new 3.5" disks. So all the existing CP/M software had to be specifically re-released for this machine, which caused a chicken and egg problem (who is going to release software for a machine nobody is buying because there is no software for it)
The MS-DOS world solved the problem by everyone just cloning the IBM hardware down to the disk format.
This is, indeed, an issue. IIRC, the only interchangeable disk format with CP/M was with 8 inch media.
Unless the disks had copy protection, you could copy them over a serial link. I did that a lot between my Apple II and other CP/M machines.
That's true but all the cool SMC-70 features, like the graphics modes, were custom to it.
CP/M programs written for other machines couldn't really make use of any of that unless they were rewritten specifically for the SMC-70.
If you just wanted the CP/M text compatibility and not the extended features you could buy a machine capable of that for much, much less.
As Kalleboo points out, if you wanted to buy off the shelf CP/M software you'd probably have to buy an external 5 1/4" disk drive too.
Digital Research had GSX, which provided a rich set of graphics primitives. Sony would need to offer a device driver or, alternatively, make the console/terminal emulate a graphics terminal such as the DEC VT-240 (and GSX would use a Tek4014 or ReGIS backend).
A lot of CP/M machines had graphics-capable built-in displays. Unfortunately, publishing software in machine-native media was a real chore back then, a bit like in the 1990's, where we had a "Unix version of NetScape" which was actually 27 slightly different versions for 27 different operating systems and binary architectures.
Some would argue MS-DOS was the CP/M of its time. >smile<
At least it had the FCB, some interrupts and COM executable format from CP/M. :)
Kind of, because while MS-DOS was compatible between PCs, CP/M depended pretty much on what 8 bit machine you had, and like UNIX required compilation from source for proper compatibility.
FTL Modula-2 for example, had several low level portability modules depending on which CP/M machine you were actually using.
MS-DOS was “mostly” compatible across different machines but there were non-PC MS-DOS machines with different disk controllers and media recording formats, giving them better capacity or performance. Only machines that followed the IBM PC recording formats would be media-interchangeable.
Since the PC used off-the-shelf components, it was tempting to be compatible, but some cursed machines tried to be different.
I’m not sure how compatible are floppies from the Victor 9000 or Epson QX-10, but I know the Sanyo 550 (?) and the Mindset, which were not quite PC-compatibles could interchange media with a PC.
They had too expensive machines that just didn't do enough to justify the extra cost. They also liked to do weird proprietary stuff, like a lot of their sub-notebooks from the late 90s/2000s are pretty awesome but they'll have stuff like the CD-ROM/Floppy drive will only connect to like 3 models using some unique connector you'll never find.
The video explains in detail why this machine did not make Sony a major PC manufacturer.
> Why didn’t Sony become a major PC manufacturer after this?
There was an HN post recently about the USA and Microsoft intervening to prevent Japan from getting too far ahead in PCs, combined with some of Japan's own mistakes.
> combined with some of Japan's own mistakes.
I often joked, back then, that MSX was a brilliant effort to persuade Japanese computer manufacturers to invest in a family of nearly identical 8-bit systems so that they could compete in price rather than features.
I saw another video a few months ago that talked about Japan’s attempt to enter the US market. I think it might have been Asianometry.
I think it talked more about MSX. By the time it came to the states it was already competing with other better established things like Commodore. And then once the IBM PC became the big thing they really didn’t have anything special to offer. It was just another set of machines that, well built well, weren’t really any different.
Racism and protectionism probably played into it some, given the time period. But mostly their offerings weren’t as unique here. So many computers weren’t practical in Asia since they didn’t support any of the local character sets so at home they weren’t competing that much with those.
So in the end none of the brands really succeeded. They became a huge place to manufacture PCs for a long time, but it was almost always under someone else’s name.
Building a microcomputer was pretty easy. Getting everyone to write software for it was very hard. Everyone tried to build an incompatible rent seeking fiefdom. Most of them failed. Then the relentless price competition of the clones finished them all off.
I love this thing so much. It has such great cyberpunk vibes with those chunky expansion modules. I can imagine a pixel-art video game where you update your in-game computer's capabilities by acquiring and plugging in these blocks into your ever-expanding system bus. It's so freakin' cool
Pretty sweet and interesting 8-bit machine. I'd love to find one near me, but they are nearly unobtanium.
I really love the keycaps.
I have one of these from an interactive exhibit. The exhibit predated my time at the company. I think it was a common form factor based around the s-100 bus.
If you can, please 3D scan everything. The original units are incredibly rare and need to be properly documented.
I also have the documentation and cut sheets. How incredible rare? I’m getting ready to shed all the mass produced computers I have. Didn’t realize this was a gem. I admit I never saw another one.
Where are you located?
http://users.glitchwrks.com/~ahm/smc70/
Love this guys vids, superinteresting.
Exactly same colours and looks as Olivetti Teleprinter 1969. Amazing, almost creepy.
This is from the time when Made in Japan meant cheap copy of things. Sony stole this Dark-Brown-Green + Grey color scheme from Olivetti. It was on all prof equipment like Tv-cameras and Beta-recorders.
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