FM Towns
The FM Towns ( F ujitsu M icro ) is a computer system sold in Japan between 1989 and 1997 .
history
It was built by Fujitsu and was based on the hardware of the PCs common at the time , but without being compatible with them. Although the device had very good technical equipment for the period around 1990, including a CD-ROM drive , long before this was to establish itself in the rest of the PC market, it was never known outside of Japan and is now an extreme rarity . The importance of the device is shown by the fact that many computer games from the early 90s were ported to the system - usually in higher quality (e.g. more colors, better sound).
Naming
The name "FM Towns" comes from the development code name used : "Townes". This was a tribute to the 1964 Nobel Prize winner in physics , Charles H. Townes . In doing so, Fujitsu followed its own tradition of naming PC products after Nobel Prize winners. When the system went into production, the "e" in "Townes" was dropped to underline a pronunciation as "Towns" instead of "Tau-Ness"; the “FM” stood for “Fujitsu Micro [computer]”.
hardware
- Main processor : 80386 processor with 16 MHz clock frequency, 80387 - coprocessor possible
- Work memory : 1–2 MB , max. 6 MB possible
- Graphics: VGA , various video modes from 320 × 240 to 640 × 480 pixels, with 16 to 32768 colors simultaneously from a palette of 4096 to 16.7 million - depending on the video mode.
- Sound: Yamaha YM-2612 for 6 audio channels, Ricoh RF5C68 for voice output
- Drives: 1 x 3.5 "- HD - floppy drive , 1 × 1-up CD-ROM drive
- Operating system : TownsOS (based on MS-DOS , but not compatible)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Fujitsu FM Towns ( English ) In: OLD-COMPUTERS.COM Museum . Archived from the original on November 21, 2010. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved December 22, 2015.
