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.
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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! :)
Tuesday 4th November 2014
Per Wallgren (Sweden)
I really fell in love with my PB-1000. Bought it some time in the early 80''s. Used it all the time in university. Wrote countless programs on it for different purposes all the way from mathematics, physics, engineering and digital communications, to games, word processing and graphics. Still works!
Saturday 2nd November 2013
ElCrack! (Ecuador)
This was my first real Computer acquired at high school in 1989- 1995. served Extremelly well during university. Learned numerical methods with it, did Vectors and matrix programs that only can be done using a PC at its time. Still keep it but in a storage overseas.
