Sony SMC-70

The SMC-70 is a computer produced by Sony from 1982.

Sony SMC-70 Micro Computer at the Vintage Computer Festival (VCF) East 6.0, at the InfoAge Science Center

Although it resembles a home computer, it was designed for professional video generation, for example in Cable television applications, and digital video effect generation. It was the first computer that used the just invented (also by Sony) 3.5" micro floppy disk drive that later became industry standard. It had a few distinctive aspects that set it aside from many of it contemporary systems. For example it did not use a version of Microsoft BASIC, but its own Sony developed BASIC, and it could handle and display kanji characters.[1][2]

Variations and upgrades

The SMC-70G is the same computer, but with an NTSC video genlocker, while the SMC-70GP has a PAL video genlocker. With the use of the SMC-7086 supercharger you could add an 5 MHz 8086 16-bit CPU that came with 256 KB of RAM upgradable to 768K, and it could then run CP/M-86.

Technical specifications

References