Hi, it's vintage computer teardown time again! We love vintage computers here on the EEV blog and this one is going to be quite interesting. That's why I had never heard of before. It was sent into the mailbag segment by our Alex from Japan so thank you very much. Alex This is the Sharp X68000 home computer slash gaming machine.

It was a personal computer if from 1987 this is one of the original models. in fact, Alex says it's the model Season 600. CB It's got a 10 megahertz processor guess which processor hmm and a working whopping 1 Meg of RAM And apparently this was a quite highly sought after machine for gamers because I had a lots of real arcade game emulations on you. liked real proper emulations and things.

so it's a real interesting construction. Yes, it's designed to be vertical like this with the dual floppy drives and Sivan got a little pop-up carry handle which doesn't work that well anymore. So I Thought we'd tear it down and see what makes his puppy tick from 1987. You know we say you're on the Eevblog, don't turn it on, take it apart.

So these things a little bit annoying to get on camera with this vertical profile. here. They did actually make ones with horizontal profile so we'll just flip it on its side like that and take a look. Shall we down the Elwha up the top Here we've got just some much status.

LEDs timer. hmm not sure what timer is for but high resolution mode to five and a quarter inch floppies r5 and quarters for the win. Awesome! Mouse port Keyboard port, volume control, one joystick port on the front, the second ones on the back, and some headphones as well. And a soft power button.

Feels like a bit of a clunking power button a bit. Apparently it is a soft power button that was a bit of innovation for the day and on the top upside down so all the electrons are going to fall out. We have a reset switch and an interrupt switch I Love it! Let's just interrupt the operating system, which by the way, it uses it's own custom operating system called Human 68k and it's like got a similar interface to DOS apparently, but yet it's certain it's not compatible. It's it's own thing.

So this is the this is actually the original one released in 1987, the Cz 600, CB and there were many other models like a dozen also released in the years after that, up to 1993. And on the back here we have a couple of expansion slots. We've got a remote interface. we've got a printer interface with just a header ribbon cable.

There we've got a hard disk interface which is not Scuzzy compatible you. it uses a Japanese variant of um, Scuzzy which was their own thing expansion floppy drive. Not sure why you'd need more than the two internal floppies. Anyway, a big clunking power on/off switch in addition to the soft one on the front.

We've got AC output. This is a hundred volts of course. I'm not going to plug it into the 240 volt mains here in. Australia Got a second joystick pot port audio in and out Rs-232 I Don't know if you could ever get like a modem or anything for it.

Anyway, the main monitor output was analog RGB and it's got image input as well see-through color not quite sure what that does TV control and stereo Scopic which I believe somebody mentioned is in like it can do like cinema type 3d thing with the different colors. so to produce stereoscopic images very interesting incuriously. It's got two ground terminals here labeled FG so yes, you could ground systems together. Hmm.

Now this thing costs are three hundred and seventy-five thousand yen. When it was released in 1987, around abouts are 1500 Yankee bucks or thereabout. So you know it wasn't a cheap low-end machine, especially for the day. With one Meg of memory and and a 10 megahertz 68000 processor in it, it was quite a high-end machine, yet apparently it had quite a lot of that pixel perfect arcade game ports.

That's why it was extremely popular with the gamers and apparently still is has some niche appeal and things like that. I Have no idea how to take this thing apart. so I've just taken off some screws I found on the bottom, but hmm and Alex said these things are notoriously bad. have what have notoriously bad power supplies in them.

So yeah, that'll be interesting to look at. So I've got the bottom screws out. but geez. I don't know.

these two things are screwed together somehow. missing screws on the other side. but how do I separate the two modules? Jeez, this is a weird-ass teardown, that's for sure. Um, please excuse the UM when I put my hands in at over exposes and stuff like that.

That's a problem with recording black objects like this. It's sort of. If I got Auto exposure in it sort of gains it up. I can turn off auto exposure so it doesn't do that.

But yeah. anyway. I'm getting somewhere. I've got expansion cover off.

There were three screws here, but there's like screws under here. so I don't know how to get to those and are there plastic clips retaining clips under there? Ah good nut. hang on does this. It feels like it might it might slide or pull off or something.

Yep, it could be a retaining clip under here. Let me play with that. uh-huh just have to give it a bit of a hit on there. And tada.

Ah, we're in like Flynn but unfortunately we got some shielding in the way. Bummer. I've got the lid of the first module open and it's clearly the processor module because, well, there's our 68000. I'll show you what that up close for you fanboys in a minute, but it's surprisingly chock-a-block Huge amount of memory array up here and well, there's our battery.

It hasn't leaked. it's actually surprisingly tidy actually. I Clean and tidy this one because the bottom will the other module. I'll call it.

The second half of this thing actually has the fan down here. So this has got the mains power supply and it looks like some you know, a hard drive, you know is some floppy drives in the expansion and stuff like that. but all the processing grant is all up here. But look at this second board here which will have to take out.

There's a huge big gut PGA device up here. pin grid array. now this: BGA ball grid array. Rubbish.

No siree. Bob and it's very well annotated to all the bought. All the component designators look even the caps have cap symbols on them. Very, very nice.

I've got another large memory array up on here, so I'm not sure what else is doing on that board anyway. they obviously couldn't fit on the mainboard surface mount devices over here. pretty fancy pantsy for 1987 and we've got A and Sharp branded ones as well cos Sharp or a big semiconductor manufacturers so it'd be no surprises for am seeing them roll a couple of their own chips at least. And there it is.

the 68000 processor. A lot of people are going. we are not worthy. We are not worthy.

We are not worthy anyway. I'm yes, socketed and but it's not a genuine one. It's a Hitoshi ripoff one. Well, you know, not ripoff.

but they did second source it I Believe Now this is interesting. Buddha Now I I Had a look and this is apparently the System controller. That's the code name for the System controller chip. They didn't use that in all the models.

this this Buddha System Controller chip and that would be a custom ASIC manufactured by Sharpe presumably it's got Sharp brand on it. anyway. Sharp D a ton of their own Asics and semiconductors so yet no surprises. They could easily do that, but this was not used on later once they upgraded and gave them different code names as they release start bigger and better versions of this system.

Anyway, this one's the Buddha and check out these seven for ALS Two for fours I Just mentioned this because their ALS They're not exactly low-power devices, although their advanced low-power shocky that's what ALS stands for. But no wonder this thing though. these old-school machines are took like quite a bit of power even though they're only only in quote marks running the process of speed of 10 megahertz and no surprises for fighting HD 63 450 Next to that that's the matching DMA Direct Memory Access controller for the 68000. CPU And these two socket and puppies here look for all the world like masked roms.

There we go. They're not window devices, you can actually see maybe the a round divot in there, but yet, these are almost certainly the mask. ROM firmware in the thing and bingo we have a date. look 87, 30, 30th week 1987 Awesome surface mount parts here.

These are very interesting. They've all got that once again, custom sharp parts. By the looks of it, you might think okay, look at the array of them, their memory or something like that. and I think that's so.

They all seem to be like a separate controller. look IX o 8 9, 4, IX o IX O 8 9, 3 o x O 9, 2, etcetera. So it's almost. They got like, you know, a separate custom chip and a whole.

You know, like an array of six of these. What the what? Are they doing? Some sort of memory access thing or something? Perhaps. but we've already got the DMA controller here. What are these things? I Got no idea.

Maybe something to do with the expansion bus? Maybe some sort of custom expansion controller? perhaps? I'm not sure now. I'm trying to get the mainboard out here. This front panel here does actually clip out as well from the underside under there. I think but I can't quite get it at the moment.

but I think I can actually wiggle the entire board out if I'm very, very careful. Hmm. get it over this metal lip here or something and it should lift out. But jeez, yeah, this is kind of tricky business.

I Got the floppy cable off and Tada we're almost out. Oh it's a bit dusty down the bottom, but bingo we got it. Awesome! So there it is, we're in like Flynn We got the whole module out here and that wasn't actually yeah, too bad at all. So it main processor board on the bottom here this top board are with a separate memory clearly the video card and the big PGA and couple of looks like another couple of Sharp system Asics There that's going to be all video card here in the RGB is down here it connects I Think it, you know it must be doing all the video processing down there on the bottom.

That's all. I can. Whoop There we go. Oh we have Cynthia and Cynthia Jr..

let's check them out. Well hello, Cynthia and Cynthia Jr.. another big PGA device because this is the board to board connector here that goes up to the video board. So this I think this is some sort of Cynthia is some sort of video interface control.

something like that, not actually the video control itself. that's the other PGA device up on the main board. But yeah and then another dip package. Um there.

Why they're doing a dip package since they're for Cynthia Jr. there and not a an SMD like they did for the others I'm not sure. but anyway it is I'm all top sided load except for a little budge capacitor on hysteria here I Love the names. Brilliant.

look at that. We'd better rip that battery out Quick smart it is. Gonski it's made in Japan as well. Um, and yeah, Look, you can see some corrosion happening around here.

Doesn't look that bad and it's extended over to the steel case of this oscillator over here. Or thankfully it hasn't gone too much further that shouldn't really affect it. I Don't think maybe there might be a trace broken. might have gotten onto the copper layer in there.

Not sure that. let's hope that there you go, That cleaned up rather nicely. I Think we caught that sucker in the nick of time. The negative part of the battery down there is a little bit cactus, so yep, just got that one.

Whoo! Now the frequencies of these two crystals are rather interesting. Look at this: sixty Nine Point Five Five One Nine Nine Megahertz, and Thirty-eight Point Eight Six, Three Six Three Megahertz. Now what are they doing? My first thought there was that of course these are a multiple hire multiple of the calibers frequency because this unit is supposed to have an NTSC video output. So yeah, but you divide that by the three Point Five, Seven Nine Five Four Five Megahertz NTSC Color burst and well, it's not an exact multiple either of those, and neither is the PAL calibers frequency either.

Hmm, well check out Cynthia Wow Ceramic package Metal top. Look at that beautiful choral Cynthia genius feeling very Marsha Marsha Marsha So why would they have split Cynthia up into two chips like this? Well, it's a good question. And of course, as I said, they consolidated I believe in the previous into the one Cynthia chip. so they absorb Cynthia Jr.

into Cynthia. So why didn't they build Cynthia Jr. into Cynthia to begin with? Well, my educated guess is well, they designed Cynthia and then they prototyped and I was okay. and then they came along and went.

odd. It'd be nice we out of this or oops, we forgot to add this and bingo rather than Reese pin this whole chip. they just did another little you know tiny little thing for a right Cynthia Junior here waited in a 28 pin plastic package. thank you very much.

So there you go. That's a complete main logic board - what I presume is the video board and processor on top. We got ourselves yet another Sharp custom. ASIC Here it's called Et I think phone home thank you very much.

Another oscillator here that's 40 megahertz so that would be divided by four to get the main, that 10-minute system clock and 20 megahertz and other stuff that it needs to do. And then we've got all our video output section down here we'll take a quick look at. So Cynthia and Cynthia Jr. I mean Cynthia here could be the main video processor I'm not sure, but then what does that one do? Hmm.

so here's the video board. Nothing in to custom. a six here Venus 1 and Vanessa two. Whatever the hell they we've got it says reserved over here so I don't know what reserve does, but got some weird-ass names and then we've got the VSOP that is them.

What looks like, well, you know P probably stands for a process of V probably stands for video. So video system, output, process, operational processor or something like that. Perhaps it's another very sexy ceramic package from Chef. Interesting look.

I've got some I've got to be super fast seven, four, F series, or pissing away the power here. And curiously, they've got three of those socketed. They're the 74s what they expect those to fail. Or maybe they were hedging their bets and goes along.

Maybe we can get away with ALS I Don't know. Ah, damn it, we'll have to put F in for the final production units, but hey, we've got an F 2 for 5 over here. and of course all of our video memory in Sip packages which we saw on the main board as well. but well, this D 25 image in connector it was labeled on the back is on this board I Don't know.

Is it some sort of video capture thing? It doesn't seem to have any, you know, hardcore hardware associated with it. I Don't know if anyone's got any clue what image in does, then let us know, Some sort of display synchronization thing between machines perhaps? Hmm. Second thought: if you follow these traces down here from the connector over here, then Bingo! It's going to this site reserved controller. By the looks of it, there's a chipset near the crystals here called Hysteria.

Once again, a custom Sharp ASIC Jeez, They really went to town on this thing. So what does it do? Well, Most likely some sort of clock controller timing chip. Something like that. It's down here now.

There's a real time clock crystal here. There's a real time up, real time clock chip right there to match up with that, but this is the main oscillator of course. And tucked away down in there is the MC 68 901 that's the multifunction peripheral chip for the 68000 nut. CPU It's a bit of a big beast physically, but it's got the like timers, counters, interrupts, control, and all that sort of miscellaneous stuff you need in a PC Not sure what the deal is with that symbol there anyone know and then our main system memory here.

this is the DRAM These are in nuts single inline packages. You'd see those anymore these days, but in terms of board mounting density, very very nice. So it's actually a nice package. I Like it.

Um, these are MB 81 - 5, 6 - 12. You can. probably? yep, just see that in there. and 120 nanoseconds of course, access time.

That's what the - 12? on the end means. And the - 5/6 is a dead giveaway that this is a 256 K bit DRAM not Meg bit K bit. Thank you very much. We're talking 1987 here.

And of course, some eight in a bake like that makes one bite. So you've got 256 K by its 512 and then total of a thousand 24 one mega of system memory. Awesome! Now for me, one of the interesting things to note about this whole thing is look at the amount of standard 7400 series logic as we saw mostly ALS, but some other families like RS and S and just a straight 770 400 even on here. And that's strange considering that they've rolled their own chips everywhere else, right? Sharp, or one of the big semiconductor manufacturers they can do this sort of stuff.

Why they didn't consolidate a lot of this other miscellaneous stuff into at least Cpl DS for example, pals and Gals and things like that I Don't know. they could have gotten a bit more density out of the thing, but yeah, maybe that was just easier at the you know at the design time. Maybe they didn't have the resources. Maybe though, too busy doing all their big custom Asics and and everything else.

so who knows. And here's the video output driver we're going to: Mitsubishi Arm M 51, 3, 8, 7 P that's a triple video driver so on RGB driver one for each Channel are red, green and blue and there's our video output down here. So yet lots of analog stuff associated with that. that's bass and pretty much the only analog stuff on this main design.

And of course, it looks like the video is coming from Cynthia up here because these are the board to board that go over to the main video board. But look, you can just just follow the traces, just follow the traces all the way down here. And this Et chipset is muddled in here somewhere as well. and this has got its own memory over here.

Cynthia or about Cynthia Jr. does. Anyway, it looks like it's for Cynthia Actually, if you follow some of the traces, they're headed up there and that memory down in here it looks super quick. 45 nanoseconds MB 81 C 78 A turns out there Ram 8k bytes at 64 K bit s ramps 45 nanoseconds so they're really screaming along.

takin the video very very seriously set there. So that's some sort of you know that could be like the like the frame buffer or something like that. perhaps? I Finally found some info on these custom chips. Well, not any detailed information, but just what each one does.

So let's see how close I was the Et chipset e et phone home is the memory controller the Cynthia and Cynthia Jr. up here. they're a combo. As you would expect, that's the sprite controller actually so and this memory around here I'm still guessing, but I would say that's probably might be the background playing memory.

Perhaps because this thing can do up to 512 by 512 background and as in background graphics and things like that. So by the way, the video of this thing quite advanced or at stake could go up to a thousand 24 by a thousand 24 resolution in 16 colors or 512 by 512 and 65,000 colors. As I said with that type background stuff and it's got its own sprite control and everything else. So really advanced graphics for the day.

Actually, this memory here is most likely to be the sprite memory because this thing does have 32 K of sprite memory. so that adds up. That's what those memory chips must be doing, just dedicated to the sprites. That's pretty impressive.

and then over on the video. Bored here. Yes, the VSOP as I suspected is the video our control main video controller chip Venus 1 and Venus 2. Here these are the CRT controller chips.

Doesn't give any more info. apart from that and the reserved chip down here. Yeah, I think I was I think I Guess that one was some sort of you know Bank select and that's exactly what it is. It's a video data selector chip.

Some of these things are like me and I quite obvious when you look at them. I mean this being a video data selector chip, just its physical location. All this memory here, right? we've got you know, large banks of memory and generally you know you might have to in a video situation. you might have to swap those in and out so it's no surprises for guessing that this physical location sort of like it's not wedge between here and here, but it's sort of you know on the way kind of thing between the video controller and the memory.

then yeah okay, it's a video data selector. hmm not hard to guess and most of the custom chips on here actually changed after this very first model. So all the following models use different chipsets. They consolidated Cynthia up here.

they changed another one to the Ohm chipset very apt for the IE V blog and there's the Massiah chipset and here, all sorts of jazz. So yeah, they just completely revamped it for the following models. Now as for the video memory here: I Couldn't find any data on this. MB 81 Four Six One Four Six One's unusual because usually they have the size of the thing.

they're like, you know, 256 512 it's going to be. you know, a power of two art moldable. But I Do know that this thing has a 512 K text video memory and 512 K Graphics Vram. So that means this Bank of out 16 here must be 512 K and this one must be 512 K So that works out to what 36 it's sorry.

32 K bits per device. So yeah, I'm not sure the part number there, but they are split into two banks and that's very interesting. Separate text graphics memory and separate video graphics memory. That's why they need this reserved controller chip here for the video.

Bank switching. Ah, these things are mattingly hard to get off to try and get these clips out of here and then slide it all back and then it's got retaining clips in here and I don't play staccato at the back. there, it was. Ah man.

Anyway, got it, we're in like Flynn First thing I'm doing going outside Dustin this thing down because it's all accumulated down the bottom and he's inside the disc drive and power supply part of it. This is our power supply module from very well shielded no problems at all to five and a quarter inch floppies. These are the soft eject type so they have soft eject buttons on the front. very nice, you know, not the old-fashioned not levy and a turn the lever and then get your fingers and pull it out.

They actually had a motor to eject the disc. very nice. Separate board up the top here for your hard drive interface and your floppy drive interface and a relatively small fan on the top of the thing here. and then we've got our mains input and output over here with our main switch bit of insulating card here.

but yeah, it's all a bit. It's all a bit messy, but it does the job. I guess now. I Don't know if the flop is actually manufactured by Sharp or not, but it certainly does have a sharp sticker on it.

Now down here on the base board, this is the Cillian System I/o controller chip. that's the codename. Now we get to the sound part of this thing. This okey part here.

this M60 258 V that's a four bit ad PCM sound chip but this is where all the magic happens. This is a Yamaha ym. It's got its own Wikipedia page. Fantastic! This was used in the earlier DX Series Yamaha keyboards.

Very advanced. FM synthesis chip for its day and it's an 8 channel FM synthesis chip with four different operators and very powerful thing. It was used in a lot of the arcade games of the era like as in the big proper arcade game machines. from you know a Konami Capcom Namco and Seger and Atari and all those ones all use this sound chip.

That's why this thing not only going to do a pixel perfect graphic arcade emulations, it can also do. It's got the same sound chip used in a lot of those game machines. but this FM synthesis chip just doesn't work on its own because it just generates the data. You need a DAC to convert that to audio and so that's paired up with another yammer.

How you can just see it tucked in there. That's the Ym 3012 DAC And given the otherwise excellent systems engineering was seen in this thing, especially for it. Like a first unit like it, you know, a first release one. It's got this big green budge wire going all the way over there not sure what that one's doing.

oops and also down on this baseboard which we may not get to the rest of it. sorry I'm running out of time for this teardown and to get into the other side of this, it could be like to get the whole board out for photography and things like that could be a bit of a pain in the ass. But anyway, I'm down on the bottom board. They were going to have a floppy controller that's in NEC 7206 5.

Apparently that'll be on the other side and then there'll be the well. It's not a scuzzy controller because this predates a scuzzy controller. This thing uses what's called an S ASI controller. It's a Shughart that stands for shoe Guard associate system interface and it was a forerunner to while scuzzy but updated models to this did include a proper scuzzy.

Our control I believe SAS I was you know, fairly pin compatible with it, but technically different and this sharp Lah 8530 a year that's a serial communications controller handle in all sorts of miscellaneous stuff now. I Would love to try and get this power supply out for you and I've I've tried, but there's something like holding it in in the center by the looks of it and it's getting really, really annoying. and I'm not sure I'm going to be able to get the thing out without sort of maybe like taking the whole damn thing apart. So which is a bit of a shame because Alex said that these things were notoriously bad these power supplies and they used dodgy caps and you had to replace them all and and everything else.

like all sorts of dodgy parts. So yeah, I would have liked to have had a peek in there, but I can't get this off without getting this out to get the screws under here and I it's all just no. it's all too much. sorry.

I'm running out of time. it's already Wednesday so sorry. Yep. I'm going to have to call it quits there I can't Oh, never time to take this down to further.

I'm gonna have to stop filming. Go edit and upload this sucker. But thank you very much Alex for sending in this x68000 from Japan Very interesting I'd never heard of it and buy a real state-of-the-art machine. Unbelievable.

You gotta remember this was released around about the same time as the Amiga and the Atari ST and it pretty much spec wise it blowing. capability wise. it just, you know, blows those ones away. Everyone raves about the Amiga and everything else, but this thing is, you know, for its day, was absolutely incredible and apparently highly sought after by the gaming fanboys who knew because it pixel perfect graphics, the sound, everything else of the arcade emulated eye games on this thing.

so I I don't know if this one that works at all I Don't think Alex mentioned it, but yeah, you might have to clean up the power supply it it looks in pretty good. Nick I See no reason why this thing shouldn't work or shouldn't be fairly easy to get going. Although the floppy drives I don't know about the floppy drives, they could be the big thing. Apparently all the games ran from the floppy drives.

Really, you didn't essentially need the hard drive in the thing. Um, and this is actually a very well engineered machine. I'm actually very impressed. Interesting duel tower format with the carry handle and and everything else.

I Don't know whether or not they originally designed it that way. you know they came up with the you know, some artist came up with the oh and I'm marketing people or whatever came up with the concept of the dual towers like this and then the engineers were given the task to I fitted in or whether or not it just naturally evolved into this sort of case. um I don't know, but very interesting bit of retro computer history right here. They Sharp X68000 only sold in Japan if they saw this outside of Japan might have been incredibly popular.

who knows, so thank you very much. Alex that was most general. If you to send this all the way from Japan and if you liked the video, please give it a big thumbs up on YouTube because that helps a lot. If you want discuss it, leave YouTube comments and all that sort of jazz or you can jump on over the Eevee blog forum.

That's where everyone hangs out and chats about the videos and everything else. Links down below and also I've got high-res tear down photos of this thing on Eevee blog.com link again down below. Catch you next time you you.