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Sord M5 |
 A
Sord M5, its cartridge bay cover open to reveal a quick reference card
(the inside of the cover) and, of course, the cartridge bay. The device to
the right with the circular pad is a joystick. 15 kbyte JPEG
file.
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Make and Model
Release
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Fallow
Information Non disponible.
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Fallowed by
Information non disponible.
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8
kbytes built in for the operating system. The BASIC I interpreter
(Sord's own simple, integer-only version of the essential language)
comes on a cartridge (visible in the photo above) and increases the ROM
by 16 kbytes, for a total of 24 kbytes.
Presumably the machine needs a cartridge to do anything
useful. |
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20
kbytes, but only 4 kbytes are actually available to the user, since
the machine's graphics chip is one of Texas Instruments' TMS-99xx VDPs
(they really like to have 16 kbytes of memory all to themselves). Memory
can be expanded by up to 32 kbytes, for a total of 52
kbytes. |
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Case
Small, dark grey and cream (or white) plastic case (measuring 24 x
18 x 3.5 cm, or 9.5 x 7 x 1.4 inches). The keyboard area is two thirds
of the depth of the unit and is dark grey in colour. The remaining third
is cream or white and is actually a cover that swings up (the photo
shows it open) to reveal the cartridge bay (which serves as a general
purpose expansion port). The inside of the cover features a reference
card of some sort.
The keyboard has really strange keys (the lower left or right corner
of the flat, plastic keys is chamfered). The keyboard area itself is a
slight (and, guess what, strangely shaped) depression on the case. All
in all, the result is pleasing to the eye (though the yellowish plastic
under the cartridge port cover is a rather bad choice of
colour). |
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Keyboard
55 flat, hard plastic calculator style keys in more or less QWERTY
layout including most ASCII characters. The space bar has moved to where
the right shift ought to be (?), so there's only one Shift
key, but it's complemented by the standard special keys
(CTRL, ESC and a backspace key). There are no
arrow keys, though the keys have more than their standard share of
symbols (presumably BASIC keywords and block graphics). The feel of the
keyboard is not very pleasing because of the very short travel distance
of the keys. Oh well. |
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Display
The exact graphics chip is unknown, but given its memory hungers and
its capabilities, it's evident that on of Texas Instruments' Video
Display Processors are used. Most probably the TMS-9918A.
That includes the usual official and unofficial modes:
- Text mode, 40 x
24, character matrix is 6x8 pixels. Two colours. Sprites are not
available in this mode.
- Text mode, 32 x
24, character matrix is 8x8 pixels. 16 colours, with each
character cell having its own foreground and background colours.
- Bitmap mode, 256
x 192. 16 colours. Colour resolution is 8x1 pixels: that is, for
every group of 8x1 pixels, only one foreground/background colour pair
may be displayed. This is a standard TMS-9918A
limitation. Text resolution is the same old 32 x
24, with an 8x8 pixel character matrix.
- Low resolution graphics 64
x 48, formed by using the text mode with 4x4 block graphics (each
8x8 pixel matrix holds four low resolution pixels). Colour resolution
is the same as for the colour text mode, i.e. one
foreground/background colour pair per 8x8 character cell (so, in terms
of low resolution pixels, 2x2 pixel groups must share the same two
colours). This mode can most likely not display text.
There are 32 sprites, as per usual and text characters can be freely
defined by the user. BASIC I has no commands for using the high
resolution modes, so one must revert to using machine code. Sprites are
manageable using BASIC, though. BASIC G, an enhanced cartridge sold as
option, allows graphics (by the way, another optional cartridge, BASIC F
also has floating point numbers). |
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CPU-independent four voice synthesiser (three sound channels and one
for white noise, most probably). BASIC I has no commands to handle the
sound generator, so the user must fall back to using the OUT
statement to play with the sound subsystem at a low level. |
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Information non disponible. |
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Input/Output
- TV output (RF modulator)
- Tape recorder port running at 2000
baud
- Composite video output
- Audio output
- Two joystick ports
- Combination Cartridge port/expansion port
- Centronics parallel printer port
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Trivia
This looks like an undeveloped MSX machine. Almost everything is
there except Microsoft BASIC. Strangely enough, little details like lack
of memory and a good language turned this otherwise cute computer into a
failure. |
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Emphasis
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Net Ressource
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Thanks to
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