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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 19 พ.ค. 2015
- What's inside the a 1987 vintage Sharp X68000 personal computer / gaming system from Japan?
Sold exclusively in Japan from 1987 to 1993 this 10MHz 68000 based boasted graphics capability superior to the Amiga and Atari ST. The powerful graphics enabled pixel-perfect ports of clasic games arcade games, and the machine was highly sought after by gamers. Running a custom operating system called Human68K, it even had 3D goggle support.
Teardown photos: www.eevblog.com/2015/05/20/eev...
Forum: www.eevblog.com/forum/blog/eev...
Datasheets:
bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pd...
www.ionpool.net/arcade/gottlie...
www.datasheetspdf.com/datashee...
www.datasheet4u.com/datasheet/...
www.bg-electronics.de/datenbla...
dev-docs.atariforge.org/files/...
pdf1.alldatasheet.com/datashee...
www.datasheetspdf.com/PDF/HD63...
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Found some of the chip names:
GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) processors:
Sprite controller:
CYNTHIA Jr (1987)
CYNTHIA (1988)
CRT controller:
VINAS 1 + 2 (1987)
VICON (1988)
Video controller:
VSOP (1987)
VIPS (1988)
Video data selector:
RESERVE (1987)
CATHY (1988)
Memory controller chips:
Memory controller:
ET (1987)
OHM (1988)
OHM2 (1989)
McCOY (1989)
DMA (Direct Memory Access) controller:
Hitachi HD63450
I/O controller chip:
SICILIAN (1987)
IOSC (1988)
IOSC-2 (1989)
PEDEC (1990)
I must admit, this machine totally passed me by, and I thought I knew of pretty much all the 1980s machines! I'd have killed for a machine with a spec like that at the time. It has to be pretty much the pinnacle of through-hole technology before SMD took over.
When you get sockets on vintage gear like that, especially where its obvious that it isn't a repair, it can be because they chip in question was in short supply, and they didn't want to hold up the production line, which might have been scheduled many months in advance. It is much easier (and safer in term of board damage risk) to run through the stock and manually insert a socketed chip than it is to solder them in.
Electron Alchemy Excellent explanation makes a lot of sense. I've always wondered about that too.
If it doesn't work, this thing might be worth resurrecting. Game collectors go nuts for these things and they go for a pretty penny on ebay. Would make a cool repair vid too!
***** Yes please, would love to see this happen.
***** Thirded. Love seeing things like this saved from the landfill!
Same here please do a repair video ;)
First teardown of a retro computer I hadn't previously heard of. Excellent!
This was a fascinating teardown, who would have thought this amount of engineering sophistication existed in 1987. Very well done explanation of the electronics.
That's an extremely slick design for 1987. That's something that'd still look fresh on NewEgg, today.
I mean, not counting the legacy ports all over the place.
And floppy drives
I really Like your Teardowns, it's great to comprehend how such systems were build.
Thank you!
the keyboard and screen along with the tower is the most modern looking design for a 1987 computer I've ever seen, (being compared to what american companies were putting out in the 80's)
***** I totally agree.Compared to the Amiga and ST of the time, this was genuinely ground-breaking. I'm off to see if You Tube can show me this thing in action.
(The design to me is not totally unfamiliar. For some reason, my brain keeps telling me it's been on a UK Computer TV show of some sort. Even if pictures of it were just shown, I've seen it before. I remember the split case design in particular.)
Why would this be so much above and beyond the Amiga and Atari ST? Weren't they all first gen 68000 machines? Amiga had comparable graphics capabilities, including genlocking. Just curious...
Stephen Furr the Amiga graphics capabilities were nowhere close to this, not even with AGA. The amiga could display some pretty stuff with expanded color modes but in motion it was a disaster unless the programmers were very, very clever. the x68k could handle high colors AND smooth, fast action for a very arcadey experience.
Stephen Furr Faster processor, more ram (although supposedly the Atari ST could have up to 4mb of ram), but the Amiga lost out to the specs of this thing big time. Computing power = this is better than those.
route20 Looking at the specs of this thing (which I hadn't heard of until Dave's mailbag and this tear down) damn I want one badly. Too bad they're in the several thousand dollar range. Still, pretty cool.
More retro computer teardowns Dave please ! , not too often but more frequent , thanks !!!
I wonder if there will ever be a revisit to this. Original models (hell, X68Ks in general) are becoming insanely hard to find, and it would be great to see one come to life again.
This must be where the idea for the Amstrad and Terradrive came from. Really neat system. This is a must for a restoration. Great video.
Love seeing the thoughtful design of old computer boards. the named chips and whatnot.
I'd love to see more retro teardowns!
Really well built machine. I love the X68K, still looking for one to add into my collection.
Sweet teardown dave!
That's a lovely bit of kit.
I love the Japanese attention to detail. Notice how each PCB has arrows that indicate the positive and negative X and Y directions for locating parts quickly. That's the symbol Dave mentions.
Nooo, you've gotta do a followup with the PSU, I'm dying to see it now :p
Fantastic machine! I own one today! It's an amazing piece of hardware, especially for 1987. The quality of games exceeded anything on the Amiga.
+The Obsolete Geek Exactly. All of the games on the X68000 were a lot better than the crap on the Amiga. The X68000 should've been released in the USA.
Fun fact: The Human 68k operating system was developed for Sharp by Hudson Soft ;3
Great video and great commentary, this is what I like a very deep in depth review with manual diagrams to follow. I had never heard of that machine or I can`t remember it at all. There is just something about looking at older computers with their tiny specs but huge chips, just goes to show how far we have come since circa 1987, my Commodore Amiga 500 had half a meg memory with an expansion port to add another half a meg, however that would have cost around £100.00 GBP and at the time the Amiga cost just over £250.00 when purchased, this was about 2 and a half times my dads weekly wage in the day! so I watch this video and just feel how lucky Alex was to have this, if he had it from 1987 that is. The specs alone would have had me and my friends drooling, but then it had 2 floppy drives built in, What? drool and dream on in my day for that machine.
Great TH-cam channel, loving these videos.
WOW.
I would've killed to have this machine back in 87'
MeMad Max DaafVadars washing up liquid gine assu rants then
The outside looks incredibly modern for something from 1987. One could easily mistake it for something 15 years newer.
Nice video, we need a part 2 on that power supply
Beautiful piece ...now i want that!
Hello Cynthia
My dream computer. So ahead of its time and beautiful. Love this dual tower design, tho the Pro version is just as amazing. 1987. That's insane. Even the peripherals and the CRT are amazing, tho the keyboard, hwhile designed well, isn't mechanical at least on the Pro (circa 1989) The damn thing is as old as me. It's also interesting that Hudson deved the OS, while also developing the HuCard thing and working with NEC on the PC Engine. Hudson is an interesting company by itself.
But yeah. Bucket list computer for sure.
I agree, an awesome looking machine! I wonder what Dave is doing with these things after the teardown, I sure hope not throwing it away, ..!
Great video! The reason you would want an expansion floppy drive is because some games came on more than two floppies so it eliminates annoying disk swapping when playing (many games booted straight from the floppies with no installation needed)
route20 Ok, makes sense then.
Alex went ahead and bought and shipped this hulking beast of a computer to you and has my utmost respect. Wondering when you get yourself a PC-98 and an MSX or two. Amazing video for an amazing computer.
I commend the dedication the both of you have.
I hope we'll see you do an SGI teardown some day!
Fantastic teardown, Really takes me back to when I was working with that kind of tech.But those RAMs aren't SIPs , they're ZILs (zigzag inline).
My favorite video game console! I consider it more of a console than a PC. Also, it can hook up to some MIDI sound devices and you can have a KILLER soundtrack for your video games! Love it, great work
I should mention, there's a file of an english 68k OS out there preloaded with a bunch of games and some software, id check it out if you dont plan to do much with this computer. (but pls do, its my DREAM computer and that'd be a waste)
do a proper followup showing the power supply then in a second video.....
At first glance labels on video card have connection to wine :) or even some "latency" of the wine.
VINAS = wine
RESERVE = it's aged wine
VSOP = grade of brandy (very super old pale).
Rimvydas Lazdauskas Interesting!
Rimvydas Lazdauskas Think bar BellZzzz?
Amiga 500 fanboy here, used to have a disk draw full of 300 floppy's.
All those NES/SNES kids of the day really missed out.
Should've had David (Dave 2?) break open the PSU while you did some editing / encoding. :D Pretty impressive piece of kit. I don't have nostalgia for this kind of kit (because we were poor and I never had an Amiga or anything else) but I got a throwback feeling to old systems like this. (First computer was an 8088. Then I got a 286, which I used as a kid until the 486 was affordable, almost a decade.) Plus, who isn't impressed by sprite processing units, those things are the GPUs of the past, and arguably do a better job at what they were intended for (my argument).
joshcryer David2 is only in a few days a week.
EEVblog Dave we don't speak of Konami any more
EEVblog Just plop it on his bench and put a DaveCAD note on it. "For Complete Tear Down" ;)
Indeed very impressive computer from the 80's. It costed 1,500$. Certainly not a PC for the average home. I love that in era of not complex integrated circuits, top computers were modular with many electronic boards. However it was easy to be repaired. Not like nowadays that nobody repairs but replace.
Maybe it was different where you live, but here in the UK the Amiga 500 was cheaper than any IBM compatible for the entirety of the time it was on sale.
Those are beautiful machines. Powerful as hell for their time too. Capcom used them to develop arcade games from what I've heard.
If u hit play, turn your volume up and leave the room or close your eyes, youd swear this is a pcb xxx film lol...,love your passion big boy
Great video! Being a fan of both the Amiga and SHARP Zaurus (I see the X68K as the cousin of the Amiga and grandad of the Zaurus), the X68K has been my most wanted computer since I learned about them but I didn't know about them until after they stopped producing them unfortunately. Do a fix vid please Dave and play some Capcom classics on it!
Please do a Part 2! This system is really insteresting!
4:46 did you miss the screw in the middle of the base plate?
Yes, missed screw.
I noticed that!
🤣🤣👍
The "3D goggle support" diagram shown at 3:42 is in fact the Famicom 3D System, made for Nintendo's Family Computer (Japanese NES). Funny that it'd be compatible with that!
Awesome Video re Antique Teardown/ early PlayStation,
Thanks for sharing. GR8 specs. wish you could have
powered it up.
Japanese computers were usually miles ahead of Western PCs in terms of graphical power due to how complicated Japanese Katakana is to display compared to letters of the alphabet. Japanese PCs needed higher resolution display modes to produce readable Japanese text which also meant they were naturally better at displaying game graphics as well. The Sharp X68k, FM Towns, MSX, and PC-88 are all really cool Japanese computers with huge game libraries and impressive specs for their time. Give them a look if you are into retro computers.
+lilpastasalad
Hands down to the MSX Series, i wish I could have one of those but I can only emulate them now :( ... but anyway the graphical power in the MSX2 is by far amazing!, an 8bit machine that renders pictures that looked like 16bits.
My mind blowed away when I watched the Metal Gear 2 Solid Snake introduction, not to mention when I played Salamander.
MSX2 + Konami/Yamaha's SCC chip, and you have a heaven of good stuff to play.
Also I heard that the PC-88 had a great RPG games, but I never gave a try, maybe is time to do so.
The best feature of X68000 is the interrupt (NMI) button next to the reset. It is the copy protection killer.
There are probably other comments that pointed this out. But the machine did rely on emulation for arcade games, it just got extremely good ports that were essentially the the same as the arcade versions as a lot of arcade systems of the time used similar hardware.
The top makes it look like 2 Xbones tied together. I love this computer
I'm right at the beginning and I REALLY hope you fix this machine if it has any problems. One of the best gaming machines of it's era. Arcade perfect ports, some of which have no other ports or decent ports (Mat Mania is one I can think of off the top of my head).
The Sharp X68000 is my most desired vintage computer. Followed closely by the Atari Falcon.
Wow. It looks so modern.
You should do a teardown of a NEC 9800 it was the main competitor for home computer / gaming in Japan in the 80's !
I loved this machine when I was young. I am so surprised you got a x68000 sent to you. Once this is fixed up, guaranteed sale on ebay. Family friend had one here in Australia in the early 90's as he travelled to Japan, Singapore whilst working for Synopsys.
truly amazing system arcade perfect conversions in the home:) ive had 3 of these in the past sadly they are all gone now :( but i still have some vids of them on my channel and all the games i had too :)
They are clocking down the system clocks instead of multiplying them, I assume to improve clock stability as oscillations on frequency get larger when you multiply the clock and they get smaller when you divide it. That Hysteria chip if related adds up to really important clock stability (as in controlling the clock hysteresis)
Nice, so nice.
Lot of thanxxxx
"see through color" Is that like an internal genlock? Like the ones for the amiga
I that 'image in' or video input board was used at TV stations to add graphic packages to broadcasts... or at least that what I remember hearing... it was an AMAZING MACHINE in its day
BTW, the X68000 OS, Human68k, was developed for Sharp by Hudson Soft.
Hudson Soft were the creators of the chipset for NEC's PC-Engine console in Japan (also released in 1987), later released in 1989 in the U.S. as the NEC TurboGrafx-16.
Kind of a cool looking enclosure.
That is a really nice looking case and that in a time when all other computers looked awful.
The pc modding side of me wants to fit a modern system in that case, motherboard one side GPU the other using a PCI-e riser
Sounds awesome, although cooling would be an issue. And finding a spot for an ATX PSU.
xFreeland1 You could always butcher a ATX PSU remove the PCB then angle the caps and transistor heat spreaders or put them on a daughter board. Its a moot point however as i don't think i will ever have this case :P but it has given me ideas for a custom case
don't you dare
Fairchild MB81461 is a dual port 64kx4bit DRAM. Ideal for video use to avoid cpu wait states while writing to video memory. I wasn't able to find a datasheet, but it's probably in one of Fairchild's old databooks.
Awesome! I hope to own one of those someday, preferably with Lagoon, Ys 3, Castlevania etc. I have played them on an emulator, but would be really neat to actually own it.
Machines like this and the Amiga make me wonder how crappy IBM clones became the dominant PC.
Also, I really hope you come back to this and open up that power supply. :)
MichaelKingsfordGray I have a hard time believing juveniles were buying $1500 computers.
Also, while I can't speak for the X68000 since I don't know enough about it, the Amiga could easily have been a good business machine.
***** Little endianness vs big endianness. The processes favored one over the other back then. It's kind of ironic really since it doesn't matter now. But back then it did.
***** the amiga *was* a good business machine, the OS was really good... its just the IBM PC preceeded it I think? ... and ran all the dominant software. business stuff was mostly text mode. Also the amiga architecture was hard to scale; AGA was too little too late. By the time of the 486 the PC had clearly pulled ahead.
joshcryer Hah, that's interesting. Couldn't be the main reason right? Perhaps one favored over the other was precisely to set the other player aside?
***** Probably not the *main* reason but it played a *huge* part in how architectures worked, and I think it enabled PC clones to become so popular. LE (little endianness) allows for some pretty clever optimizations in code. To not get too complicated, the first *very popular* consumer level processor (6502) used a very simple form of "pipelining" which is a way for the CPU to read an instruction as its executing the last instruction. LE enables this because the byte order automatically puts the instruction at the low end of the data. Obviously now a days it's basically irrelevant because of how dang complicated CPUs are, but it still exists as a thing due to backwards compatibility and such. Internally I wouldn't be surprised if some CPUs have such crazy hacks as to be bi-endian (at a layer you won't be able to access).
I'd really love to see a follow up/repair of this thing. Do you still have it?
That pc looks really good! I would like a case like that with new tech inside :)
Nice tear-down. Btw, I was screaming in my head _You missed a bottom screw on right there on the center!!!_
Please put up a revisit video on trying to repair the unit. I want to see that power supply...
EEVblog Nice teardown! Any idea, what the symbol under the arrows at the right top at #11:44 is?
Oh snap. Retro computers/consoles are the "ducks guts"... Thanks for putting this one up for us.
Its amazing how PCs have upgraded over the years. We got this at 10Mhz, now we got the Raspberry Pi 2, which is about 1/8 the the size of this, at 900 Mhz with a Gb of RAM. :O
I'd love to hunt one of these down, mainly for the extremely good arcade ports it had for the time.
I like how they they pushed all of the noisy and dirty components away from the precious video and expansion slots.
I am curous if they designed the system functions as a flat slab and then wrapped it around that form factor-- or developed the general concept idea from their earlier X1 design w/ the physical (weight and space) limitations in mind.
I would be very interested in a video of you trying to fix this awesome machine!
Also, interesting tidbit. Capcom used this machine to develop CPS games! bloody awesome
this commentary, brilliant!
A part 2? My fave machine!
I have seen those SMD IC's from Sharp before in music electronic from that era and I think they are something like MASK programmed or OTP PALs / GALs doing all the address decoding stuff.
FG is frame ground. Since japanese outlets do not have a ground terminal this allowed you to ground the case of the machine. Pretty common for metal housed equipment intended for japanese consumption.
Yamaha YM3812 (OPL2) they ware in the old Sound Blaster 1.0 cards. [If you were wondering.]
(Days gone by.)
The DX7 (1th gen) has a YM2128. I had to open it up to dust it.
IIRC people used to hook these things up to external midi processors to play games with wavetable synth
I await the modern remake of this machine... ;)
All the capcom CPS1 games were programmed on this computer, like Final Fight and Street Fighter 2. That's why the ports are virtually identical. It's basically the same hardware.
The biggest difference between this and Capcom Play System 1 (Actual arcade hardware) is the graphics you were locked the CPS1 to a resolution of 384x224 with some extras two more bg layers 8x8 and 32x32 with the 16x16 bg layer with raster effects. Both share the ludicrous amount sprites they could output 32 per scanline.
For 1987 thats a really good looking design.
That was actually optimized to play video games on, big in japan for people that could afford more then a nintendo.
Nice machine. Love that 68000
WOAH, these were like rumors when I was a kid. Thanks for tearing it down; now I almost believe they exist.
oh and that +- symbol is of course to tell you how to hold is so that the electrons don't fall of. Very handy for aussies, given that they live upside down...
so what youre saying is, the camera doesn't anticipate how white your hands are. this video came up while i was researching fm synthesizer chips. probably one of the nicest 68000 pcs
The interface is SASI a predecessor to SCSI.
it's the best day of my life. the X68000 and Dave. together at last.
goddamnit i'm so happy i'm gonna party like it's 1987 with some Akumajou Dracula and Gradius II!
I'm pretty sure the arrow cross symbol with 2 pluses and 2 minuses is an alignment symbol, for assembly during manufacturing. as in where should the pcb point (-X to +X, -Y to +Y)
EEVblog Something seems wrong with the audio quality. Listen to the spark sound at the end.
The hard drive interface of the X68K is a SASI system. A paralell interface (VERY) prior to SCSI. SASI is an abbreviation to "Shugart Assiciates System Interface" and is made by Shugart Associates, and is (VERY) American.
Damn I was really hoping we would get a look at that PSU
Such an old computer being so sought after reminds me of the IBM 5100 in Steins;Gate.
Interesting, please make a part 2 video with the power supply and the rest :)