The Turbo serie was launched simultaneously with the X1 serie.
The X1 Turbo has enhanced graphic features. It also has additional hardware compared to the X1 serie: DMAC, CTC and SIO as standard. CTC & SIO can be however implemented on X1 serie through additional FM sound board or Mouse/Rs-232C board. But DMAC can not.
Turbo series has a special "KANJI" V-RAM, compared to X1 series which has only one way to display "KANJI" symbols, a heavy task for the Z80A: to display 1 "KANJI" character, 96 bytes of data are transfered to the V-RAM. As opposed, Turbo series just send 3 bytes of data (2 bytes for shift JIS code, and another 1 byte for attribute) to the "KANJI" V-RAM. Among the 8-bit systems, only the X1 Turbo serie and MZ-2500 have this special V-RAM. The access time is almost null, compared to the X1's V-RAM which is slower.
In the same way, it takes from 2 to 8 seconds to define P.C.G (user generated characters, similar to sprites) with the X1 serie, while it takes only 0.5 seconds with the Turbo serie. The MZ-2500 is also equiped with this feature.
There were in fact three models:
- Model 10: built-in tape recorder, no KANJI ROM, only 48 KB V-RAM (additional 48 KB available as an option),
- Model 20: one 5.25" disk drive instead of the tape recorder,
- Model 30: two 5.25" disk drives
We need more info about this computer ! If you designed, used, or have more info about this system,
please send us pictures or anything you might find useful.
Please consider donating your old computer / videogame system to Old-Computers.com or one of our partners.
NAME
X1 Turbo
MANUFACTURER
Sharp
TYPE
Home Computer
ORIGIN
Japan
YEAR
1984
KEYBOARD
separated full-stroke keyboard with numeric keypad
CPU
Sharp Z80 A
SPEED
4 MHz
RAM
64 KB
VRAM
96 KB
ROM
128 KB + 40 KB
TEXT MODES
20 / 40 / 80 x 10 / 12 / 20 / 25
GRAPHIC MODES
320 x 200 / 640 x 200 / 320 x 400 / 640 x 400
COLORS
8
SOUND
3 voices PSG
SIZE / WEIGHT
Main unit: 390(W) x 390(D) x 108(H) mm / 11 Kg Keyboard: 390(W) x 185(D) x 35(H) / 1.3 Kg
I/O PORTS
2 x I/O ports, 2 x joysticks (Atari), audio out, keyboard, printer
BUILT IN MEDIA
2 x 5.25'' FDD
OS
S-OS
POWER SUPPLY
Built-in PSU
PRICE
Model 10: 168 000 yen (Japan, 1984) Model 20: 248 000 yen (Japan, 1984) Model 30: 278 000 yen (Japan, 1984)
