Sharp PC-G850V - The last pocket computer
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- čas přidán 6. 05. 2021
- This video is about the Sharp G850V, a pocket computer released in Japan in 2001 that supports BASIC, C and assembly language for three architectures (Z80, CASL and PIC).
In the video I walk through an example of an 8-Queens solution in BASIC, C and Z80 assembler. I also demonstrate the RAM disk functionality and the machine language monitor.
For another video showing how the G850V can be used to program a PIC microcontroller, check out • Sharp PC-G850 PIC Prog...
And for information about the N-Queens calculator benchmark, and the Z80 source check out www.hpmuseum.org/cgi-sys/cgiw...
And for more calculator videos check out my channel / calculatorculture - Věda a technologie
As a programmer, I find this kind of device very compelling. Yes, current cellphones are 100 times more powerful, but they are consumption devices. With one of these, you are the artist, and it is the canvas. I learned BASIC on a Tandy PC-1 and spent hours typing in games and useful programs from magazines. It was a cool experience.
It's always interesting to see these ultimate evolutions of a product category that often happened after the world had started to move on. They can often do things that you wouldn't have expected to be possible. This was from the same year as the iPod, 5 years after the PalmPilot, the year before the Sidekick/Hiptop. But I would have coveted it so greatly if I'd heard of such a device in the 1980s. (As it was, I used one of its ancestors.)
I think there is still a demand on those little pocket computers. I would buy one.😊 Nowadays, should have BASIC, C and PYTHON. 😊😊😊
I have had and used this pocket computer for a long time. The PC-G series was mainly for school education. However, since the PC-G850V was equipped with a PIC function, it was sold at some electronic shops. Therefore, it is a relatively easy-to-obtain model. The true final model was the PC-G850VS.
Yeah its hard to find much info about the VS model, do you know what the different was?
why is this channel so low on subs? I hope the algorithm blesses you with views and subs
love it! I knew about the older BASIC pocket computers from Sharp but this blew my mind. BASIC, Z80 assembler AAAAND a C-Interpreter in one little calculator. I would love to play around in this one.
Glad you liked it!
I have a Sharp PC-1350 Pocket Computer I bought in Tokyo in 1985. An amazingly versatile substitute for a pocket computer. I used to dream up programs for it on my 1.5 hour daily commute into central Tokyo. Fiddling with encryption algorithms was a favorite hobby.
I have not programmed in Basic for more than 35 years but operating it in the calculator mode was so intuitive and easy it left all these calcs with 50 function buttons in the dust.
Today after 37 years it just died on me and I'm heartbroken, it wont light up even with fresh batteries. I cannot understand why this great device died, either mine or the lack of a market for these devices. Is it that people are too intellectually lazy to learn basic or even rudimentary C?
How I wish they could be resurrected. Does Sharp still have the designs?
Sharps stock price hit $635 on Jan 6, 2000 its now trading at $2.72. So sad.
Yeah it is sad the category died. I presume Japan engineering students use laptops now?
@@CalculatorCulture Yes in fact the math and graphing apps are wonderful tools but programming these apps is far beyond most peoples means and abilities.
Fashions in programming languages have changed--if someone made a similar machine today, it might use Python or Javascript as its core language. But really that's not a large difference.
I think the key things are that first, truly portable laptop computers became cheaper and more widely available (and most people, if they code at all, would prefer to program on those given the chance), and second, powerful smartphones and tablets with touchscreens subsumed most other types of personal electronic device. I do truly miss devices with buttons all over them, but for most people, touchscreens seem to be good enough, and it's cheaper to manufacture them now. And that device today is your pocket personal organizer, Internet terminal, camera and calculator, with whatever capabilities you choose to download in an app.
One of my favorites, happy to own one. Thanks for the great vid, and the supplementary links! Keep up the great work!
Good video of a wonderfull machine. Thank you !
This machine would be a dream for me to own, but that would be until the late 90s. By 2001, with that low res / few columns display and 8 bit CPU, I probably would like to play with it, but would not convince me to spend the money.
Really happy and proud to own one, I have it as my desktop calculator. It can run repeated calculations via C or BASIC.
Nice little machine :)
Yeah along with likes of the Casio Z1 GR and the HP 71B it was one the most powerful pocket computers built.
My first computer was a Casio FX-702P. After many decades I still love programmable calculators, pocket computers and some PDAs. I still believe that personal computers should stay in a pocket and not on a desk. Not sure if smartphones are pocket computers 🤔😀
The way they work in pop culture, they're more like phones and billboards for advertisers, not really computers. I kinda treat any device with a touch screen as a child's device. Yes, I'm button-elitist. :P
@@heavysystemsinc. Hi Jeremy
Smartphones ARE computers. They have CPU/GPU, RAM, Storage, I/O and an operating system…
But for me computers are passion & sacrifice, study & work [and freedom] and that's what I don't feel about smartphones
Smartphone operating systems aren't designed for use as pocket computers, they've been designed as pocket appliances for the average person. That's a huge difference. Pocket computers and programmable calculators were designed for a specific niche. If I want to use a smartphone as a pocket computer, I have to go out of my way to install a bunch apps. The fact that most smartphones don't come with a simple text editor that allows me to save and open files that can be easily shared with other apps is quite depressing.
I love retro gadgets.
The C byte-code compiler is a novelty. And it requires line numbers! What!!
wow.. basic and C and assembly languages
I recently bought an as-new PC-1211. I had one in the early 80's and made a katakana character set that I could write and print out. I remember making a ?? 7x5 matrix and drawing in each pixel, then somehow getting the code to display. THe brain is now 40 years older and I have no clue on how I did it!
Yeah one thing I didn't go in to was that the 850V supports bunch of functions in BASIC and C for writing pixels and shapes to the screen. You probably made a 7x5 matrix using a 2-dimension array.
@@CalculatorCulture Thanks for the reply. I am completely at a loss how I coded the 5x7 matrix to a number, and then how I displayed it! As I also mentioned on the FB page, I drew a train and it moved across the display. Again, how!?!
I try c struct statement. It seems not work properly. It works! But the members cannot be set separatly.
It works fine. I have mixed variable definitions and statements which is not possible...
I have one, it work well but unfortunately the notice is not in French or in English.
But I prefer my pcE500 and 500s.
The last pocket computer? The smartphone in your pocket is a computer.
Sure, though when calculator collectors use the term they mean something more specific en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pocket_computer
Fair enough@@CalculatorCulture
@@CalculatorCulture And even *at the time*, that category didn't include everything that arguably was a pocket computer. Calculators with powerful Turing-complete programming environments generally didn't get the designation unless they had this kind of horizontal alphabetic-keyboard format, and supported the computer languages characteristic of personal computers (usually BASIC). So the HP 71B was called a pocket computer, but the HP 48SX wasn't even though it was arguably more powerful.
Does the Basic or C mode not support calling the trig functions from the calculator, or log ln .. ? Edit : Sure, but After looking into the manula,it seems not. The BASIC is not better than TI Basic, means, you cannot define your own fucntion. Which is a shame.
I know this calculator run a cmos version of the Z80. But witch one? 🤔
And i dont understand how the made it to understand all of this program language. What I see it have 64kb rom and 32kb ram. But Z80 can only handle 64kb totaly. I really want to understand this one. 😊
Some kind of bank-switching scheme maybe?
Is it possible to define a struct in C?
Yes it it supports structs (+ unions and typedefs)
@@CalculatorCulture How do you define them? I must be doing something wrong! This would make it an improvement over the Casio VX-4
Here's an example...
10 main() {
20 struct point {
30 int x;
40 int y;
50 };
60 struct point p1 = { 50, 60 };
70 printf("%d, %d", p1.x, p1.y);
80 }
@@CalculatorCulture Many thanks for the example. Probably I was just getting it wrong but could it also be due to me trying to declare the struct outside of main(). I didn’t know you could define them inside of main()! Perhaps I need to try again on the VX-4?
@@CalculatorCulture The VX-4 does not accept struct nor typedef struct. Try as I might I can’t get it to accept it. So the 850 is a definite improvement in this regard, but those line numbers are a pain!
But with this one you can't plot anything right out of the box ? And it's for the Japanese market...
Il souffre d'un grave problème d'affichage de pixel qui se déclare lentement avec le temps. La colle utilisée pour fixer la nappe est de mauvaise qualité du coup au bout de plusieurs mois les pixels commencent à ne plus s'afficher, par lignes et par colonnes. Dommage.
Merci pour l'info, j'en ai une depuis 7-8 ans, je ne l'utilise que peu préférant mon pcE500 que je connais bien, en plus du fzit qu'il n'y a pas eu de version de manuel traduit en français (quoi que avec les avancées des traducteurs sur smartphone un de ces 4 je vais tenter...), le peu que je la sors là calroche fonctionne bien. À voir avec plus de temps, mais hormis lorsque je l'ai reçue (neuve) j'ai tout de suite vue que l'écran était très légèrement bancale (j'ai pris cela pour une mauvaise finition, le rendu cheap de la becan n'ayant rien à voir avec ses grandes sœurs), sinon pas de défaut d'alignement des pixels.
Parcontre mon pcE500 qu'un oncle à eu dès sa sortie et qui me la refilé courant 95 par la suite fonctionne encore du feu de dieu malgré des années d'études à traîner dans les sacs, les sorties en extérieur pour le boulot, elle est juste increvable et le pcE500s pareil (bien que moins agréable et un contraste d'écran qui s'est fatigué). Je ferais attention à cela... sinon y a t-il un remède?