Tiki 100
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Tiki 100 was a desktop home/personal computer manufactured by Tiki Data of Oslo, Norway. The computer was launched in the spring of 1984 under the original name Kontiki 100, and was first and foremost intended for the emerging educational sector, especially for primary schools. Due to a dispute with Thor Heyerdahl, famous for his Kon-Tiki raft used in his expedition in 1947, the name was later changed to Tiki 100. Early prototypes had 4 KiB ROM, and the '100' in the machine's name was based on the total KiB amount of memory.
The computer was based on the Zilog Z80 CPU, and featured:
- A full-travel keyboard integrated into the computer case
- A colour graphics CRT interface with palette, supporting 3 different graphics modes with 240, 480 or 960 by 256 pixels with 16, 4, or 2 simultaneous colours respectively in 32 kibibytes of dual ported memory.
- A TV interface
- A AY-3-8912 polyphonic sound generator
- One or two integrated 5¼ inch floppy disk drives
- Two RS-232 serial ports
- One Centronics printer port
- 64 KiB of RAM (main memory)
- 32 KiB of graphical memory
- 8 KiB of ROM
Software included:
- TIKO, a CP/M-compatible operating system
- A version of the BBC BASIC programming language interpreter
- A COMAL interpreter
Optional equipment:
- Harddisk controller, replacing one of the floppy disk stations with a harddisk.
- A bespoke network-hub that allowed up to 16 computers to connect in a network, sharing disks and printers. The server was a Tiki-100 with harddisk, running the MP/M operating system, serving up to 3 different printers simultaneously.
- A second CPU card, with an 8088 processor running MS-DOS (but not PC-compatible). In this mode, the Z80 CPU is serving as an I/O processor, handling disk I/O, graphics etc.
The Tiki-100 had 3 different graphics modes, but no text-mode as it used bitmapped graphics only. The modes supported 40, 80 or 160 by 25 characters, respectively, and hardware vertical scroll.
[edit] The rev.D
Later, an Intel 8088 based IBM PC compatible model running MS-DOS was made, somewhat confusingly called Tiki 100 Rev.D. In addition to being PC-compatible (including CGA-compatible graphics), it also contained a Z80 processor so that it could seamlessly run the original Tiki 100 software, although with a slightly reduced graphics specification due to the CGA. The two processors shared the same bus, and the Z80 programs still ran under the 8088 operating system.
