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C > CASIO
> FP
6000

FP 6000

The Casio FP-6000S is Casio's most ambitious
computer for overseas market. It has been marketed in all of
Europe's countries. However, it is also Casio's biggest (and
costiest) failure on the market. It was hindered by three things :
it was pretty late to arrive to the marketplace (developed in 1984,
it only arrived in Europe in 1986), it was very expensive (US$ 10000
for a system with monitor, FDD and HDD), and the distribution
channels (accustomed to watches and calculators) did not know how to
sell this beast. Moreover, it was NOT IBM compatible, although it
was indeed MS-DOS (ver. 2.11) compatible, which certainly did not
help. Very few specific software was developed for the 6000.

The FP-6000S still has a beautiful, modular design. The CPU
unit is housed in a tall vertical white unit with a grey faceplate.
The on/off switch is bright orange (the white and orange colors has
been consistently used by Casio for its professional computer
range). The 94-key keyboard was one of the best mechanical keyboards
ever produced, along with IBM's 'M' "clicky type" model. The CPU has
three slots for expansion. Both the mono and color monitor are
antiglare and have a very good image quality.

The CPU
offered 256Kb standard memory, upgradeable to 768 kb using 256Kb ram
boards. Hence, up to two RAM boards could be added. Since these
would eat all the available slots on the FP-6000S, Casio produced a
special expansion cabinet (FP-6060S-IO) similar to the one of the
FP-1000 line (FP-1060 I/O), therefore adding 5 more slots. Which
would total 3+5 (-1 for the expansion cabinet board)=7 useable
slots.

All the disk and expansion units are housed in same
sized and shaped cabinets. User had the choice of adding 1 or
2-drive, 5.25" (320kb or hi density 1.2 Mb), or even 2x8" (1.2 Mb).
The FDD unit was connected through the FDD Interface Board, using
one of the slots of the FP-6000S. An optional splitter box (FP-6051)
allowed to connect two disk cabinets, for up to 4 floppy disk drives
total.

The Hard Disk Drive unit offered similar modularity.
One could start with a 10-MB HDD, and daisychain a second 10-MB
Unit. Later on, Casio offered 20-MB models. These were connected
using an dedicated Hard Disk Drive Interface Unit, using another
slot.

There were a lot of options available to the FP-6000S,
which concurred to increase the cost of a complete system. The most
curious one was the 64kb Video Ram Expansion (consisting of 8x8kb
chips), since the standard video ram was only 32kb. Having 96kb
video ram total allowed use of all of the hi-resolution graphic
modes in color.

Other options included a mouse (with an
interface board), a GPIB interface board, a printer board (up to 2
printer boards could be added), a printer buffer board (with 32 Kb
RAM), a "universal" board (a bare PCB in fact), and an RS-232C
interface.

The Casio FP-6000S used MS-DOS 2.11, which
supported directories. it also sported a high-end Basic language,
the C86-Basic which was a simple DOS executable consisting of a
loader (C86BASIC.EXE) and an overlay (C86BASIC.BIN). C86Basic took
up some 50 to 60 Kb, leaving very small useable memory for BASIC
programs on an 256Kb machine. The FP-6000S had a fantastic demo
Casio used on trade shows and such, with sound and graphics, that
only runned on a 512kb machine with 96kb Vram. Like all Casio
Computers, C86-Basic used 10 program zones, and was upwards
compatible. One could transpose pretty easily programs coming from
the FP-200's C85-Basic and FP-1000/1100's C82-Basic. An extended
graphics command set (for that time) allowed for lots of graphics
fantasies, including virtual/ layered screens, adaptive X-Y
coordinates and graphic modes (from 160x100 upto 640x400).

Thanks to Joscelyn FLORES, fond of Casio computers,
for all this information.

NAME

FP
6000

MANUFACTURER

Casio

TYPE

Professional
Computer

ORIGIN

Japan

YEAR

1985

BUILT IN LANGUAGE

None

KEYBOARD

94-key
QWERTY, configurable with FP-Conv 6000 options.

CPU

16-bit,
i8086 compatible, 8 Mhz

SPEED

16
Mhz.

CO-PROCESSOR

Optional
8087 arithmetic processor

RAM

256 KB
expandable to 768 KB

VRAM

32 KB
expandable to 96 KB

ROM

4 KB
(BIOS)

TEXT MODES

80 chars. x
25 lines.

GRAPHIC MODES

640 x 400
pixels

COLORS

16

SOUND

1 canal -
Built-in loudspeaker

SIZE / WEIGHT

CPU : 12 (W)
x x30.3 (H) x 37.5 (D) cm / 8,5 Kg
Keyboard : 45.2 (W) x 20
(D) x 3.8 (H) cm / 2 Kg
Monitor : 31 (W) x 30.8 (H) x 39.9
(D) cm / 7 Kg

I/O PORTS

1 x
Parallel, 1 x Serial RS232

BUILT IN MEDIA

1/2 x 5.25''
320 KB or 2 x 8'' 1.2 MB floppy drives
Optional 10 MB and
20 MB hard-disks

OS

MS-DOS

POWER SUPPLY

Built-in
power supply unit

PRICE

From about
$3150
256 KB / 2 Disk-Drives model = 28 500 FF (France,
febr. 84)
10 MB Hard-Disk / Color monitor model = 56 000 FF
(France, febr. 84)

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