Sage Technology designed the Sage II around one of the fastest and most powerful chip available at the time, the Motorola MC68000, which was designed, among other things, for the implementation of high-level languages.
The Sage II, didn't look awesome. It was physically smaller than an Apple II, but packed a true 16 bits CPU and 512 KB of RAM. Only 128 KB were left free for the user, the remaining 384 KB being used as a RAM disc.
The Sage II used the UCSD P-System operating system. P-System means P-Code, an early universal intermediate code concept for programming languages, the same idea that Java is now based upon. Sage had even modified the P-System so that the system was truly multi-user. A special version of CP/M called CP/M 68K could also run on the Sage II.
One or two Mitsubishi 5.25 inch floppy drives were used to store programs and data. Each one could store up to 800 Kb per disk in the native Sage format. They were fully software configurable and had preset formats for IBM, Xerox, Rainbow and other systems. The only problem is that the Sage II didn't provide any hard disk management. This is will only be possible with the Sage IV model (10 to 40 MB hard disks).
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.).
Doctor Smith says: Cackling Cacophony! Very fast over priced junk. I prefer Apple II anyday over this Bubble-headed Booby.
Friday 3rd February 2017
Doctor Smith says: Cackling Cacophony!
I had one of these for a while. Nice machine, and astonishingly quick given its vintage. Distinctive feature - the CPU activity LED changed colour depending on whether the CPU was in user or system mode!
