We Had Amiga – Japan Had THIS

Comments · 511

• AT

  @atomicskull6405 · 3 months ago (edited)

  From a hardware standpoint the FM Towns was basically a 386 based PC but with an arcade quality graphics card with paralax background layers, sprites(1024 sprites!) and rotation and scaling instead of a "dumb" framebuffer display like VGA and  OPN rather than OPL based sound.

  111

• EI

  @eightbit1975 · 3 months ago

  The dongle in the back is a SCSI terminator. In the days of SCSI devices, you had to terminate the last device in the chain, or none would be seen. Its for CD drives, hard drives, scanners...SCSI stuff.

  70

• MA

  @mark902 · 3 months ago

  they even splurged for a trinitron tube for the monitor. luxury.

  19

• AK

  @Akutabai5 · 3 months ago

  The cd drive being vertical so you can watch the disk spin is a good visual design decision

  17

• AT

  @atomicskull6405 · 3 months ago (edited)

  On the FM Towns sprites were on an independent layer that was locked at 256x240 pixels, if you e.g  switched to 320x240 or 640x480 the sprite layer was still 256x240 stretched to fit the display area. So hardware sprites would sometimes be lower resolution than the other background layers. Also it has 1024 sprites and apparently no limits on sprite pixels per line. This could allow for Neo Geo-like sprite set pieces being used in the background to increase the apparent number of separately scrolling background layers.

  8

• RE

  @ReaperMan1010 · 3 months ago

  I remember this being like an urban myth when I was a kid, you would hear whispers that there was a computer shop that had one in but you’d never be able to find out where it was.

  5

• DA

  @danielktdoranie · 3 months ago

  IIRC these machines had their own Unix version too

  5

• BE

  @benjaminslayton4335 · 3 months ago

  The thing on the bottom at <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGIIvR190Jw&amp;t=367">6:07</a> makes me think of a SCSI terminator.

  3

• TH

  @TheTenthArt · 3 months ago

  @<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGIIvR190Jw&amp;t=373">06:13</a> This is a SCSI terminator. You must leave it in as the SCSI topology demands that a terminator is plugged in the end.

  12

• CD

  @cdoty · 3 months ago (edited)

  Japan was ahead of the game on CD-ROM based systems. In 1988, the PC-Engine got the CD-Rom add-on, and the FM Towns got a CD a year later. They were also supported as the main boot device, and not just a peripheral.<br><br>It was surprising how much of the FM-Towns software development took place in the UK.

  12

• TO

  @TorontoWanderer · 3 months ago

  I have the 3rd gen Tower complete 386SX 6mb Ram 80MB SCSI HDD. PSU upgraded to a Pico universal PSU. Its still my Goto to play arcade conversions!

  4

• TR

  @transformational_experience · 3 months ago (edited)

  The FM-8, FM-7 (and improved FM077AV) is imho the most interesting 8bit architecture, it had 2 6809 chips, one served as a dedicated graphics accelerator, a predecessor to todays GPUs. They came standard with not only 64kB main but also at least 48kB graphics memory for 640x200 in 8 colours. 2 CPUs and about twice the memory of the competition doesn&apos;t come cheap.

  2