The X68000 XVI great unveiling thread (sort-of-picture-intensive)
Agh, bear with me - this camera really doesn't like low-light photos, and Imageshack is making the thumbs smaller than I wanted (but maybe that's a good thing). I can get some nice daylight shots when we actually pull the thing out later, however. A new camera doesn't sound like a bad idea at this point, though.
The BACKGROUND, then:
Back around 1987 Sharp followed up with the Sharp X1 (and assorted other machines) with the release of what would become the pinnacle of their personal computer line, the X68000. Pretty dang ahead of its time. A good primer is available at GameSX, and Lawrence / NFG has written up information about it and its games elsewhere. With the assistance of modern information technology (!) I hope to get some more cool information in the coming months - a lot more. With a large selection of original games and classic arcade game ports, running with original code and on a very arcade-like system, there's a lot to like about this unusual computer system which came standard with 1MB of RAM, two 5.25" floppies, and a 10MHz 68000 processor as standard (the XVI, and we will see both incarnations of it, has a switch for 16MHz mode, hence the roman numeral for 16).
Back in 2003 I was getting all excited about getting my very own retro computer, the Sharp X68000 (Ace HD model). With the assistance of an American serviceman, I had the core of what would become the largest X68000 collection on my block (known to me, anyway). Unfortunately in the process of shipping from the U.S.S. Kitty hawk, said system was banged around a bit. The monitor (which I don't remember having tried out until just two days ago, but I probably did) doesn't work, and I quickly (and foolishly) took the system apart for cleaning. What a nightmare. It's still sitting around in some boxes.
Not to get political, but consider that my own X68000 odyssey must've started at least late in the year of the Iraq invasion and continued throughout the rest of that stressful Presidency. Times have changed, though, and finally...springtime is here (but not for Hitler...eh, maybe that's not the best time for a Producers reference)!
Then I bought a Pro from NFG that year. It's still sitting around somewhere in storage in Japan, as I didn't have money to actually ship it out at the time (lol) and we forgot to add it in when I had the rest of my stuff sent to the U.S. It's a nice model - new power supply (the part that fails in these units often, according to Lawrence) and the desktop format makes it easy to add (to paraphrase him) crazy CPU upgrades, RAM, and internal hard drives. I hope to see this one sometime this year.
Anyway, without fanfare - here's some really lousy pictures 'n' stuff to give you a rough idea about the scale of what we're dealing with. This big thing (standard DOLLA BILL for reference) showed up yesterday:
Standard AMERICAN DOLLER BILL for reference.
?! They're multiplying!!
Note: Only the second A/V Famicom was also in the shipping box - all the other stuff was already around here.
Hey, you...if you're a...I don't know what...and, an XVI, sitting out there, then what's...in...the box?!
What darkness lurks in the midst of these packing peanuts? The Shadow knows.
Tune in next time for the next thrilling adventure in high fidelity gaming.
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Originally Posted by atm55
