Sony's First Computer – The SMC-70 from 1982 [video]

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 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!

Love this guys vids, superinteresting.

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.

The expansion design was surprisingly advanced for 1982. Why didn’t Sony become a major PC manufacturer after this?

[dead]