The Casio PB-1000 was an original, well designed and powerful pocket computer for its time.
On top of its standard QWERTY keyboard, a row of sensitive keys allowed fast
scientific calculations, menus access and text editing. The 4-line LCD display
also had 16 sensitive areas.
The computer could be programmed either in Basic or Assembly language. The C61 Basic interpreter, based on Japan Industrial Standard BASIC, had a wide range of built-in mathematic, trigonometric and statistic functions. Assembly programs had to be typed by using the built-in editor then compiled. The user's manual gave little information about CPU instructions and, oddly enough, Casio and it's distributors never released a full description of the whole CPU's instructions set, although Casio published an incomplete "Technical Reference Manual".
The processor was an Hitachi HDS61700. It contained a small amount of ROM and RAM, as well memory management and I/O circuitry. The memory was managed like a virtual disk. Several Basic or Assembly programs as well as ASCII text could be stored together in the same RAM area.
Two extensions were released for the PB-1000, the FA-7 Serial, Parallel and tape recorder interface, and the rare MD-100 3.5" floppy drive unit.
The PB-1000 was followed by the PB-2000 which lost the lift up display but had the unique feature of being programmable in ANSI C language.
Please consider donating your old computer / videogame system to Old-Computers.com or one of our partners from anywhere in the world (Europe, America, Asia, etc.).
Hi, I bought my PB 1000 in 1986 and used it at school and later in the job. It was and is still an awful calculater/computer. It was the first one I owned. I''m still owning it. And sometimes I use it.
Wednesday 15th June 2022
Juergen Leibner (Germany)
Hi I am a process engineer, during university studies I had a pb 200 and then axpb 1000. I wrote many incredible calculation codes and I suppose I surclassed all owners of hp48. The pb 1000 was really well built and optimized after the experience of the previous casio pocket pc., I really loved it
Sunday 2nd January 2022
Gabriele Ruffini (Italia)
I really liked my PB-1000. I loved to make programs on the calculators. And the PB-1000 was the only one that you could program in assembly. I bought it in them middle of the 80''s and have it still with the disk drive MD-100. And still working! One of the best calculators ever made! :)
