Sharp electronic organizers with the IC card slot (Wizard OZ/IQ/PA/PI series)

[rprosperi]

(02-18-2022 09:42 AM)Akuji Wrote:  

(03-29-2021 06:00 AM)Akuji Wrote:  Yes and no. As you noticed, production was not fully ramped up yet, so they used another card's back, but the PEEK command in this card refuses to read the organizer's password, so the firmware was either fully baked or very close to it. I suspect that only a handful of cards like this one ever existed, as final beta-testing units. Bob, does that sound right?

I was provided a photo of the OZ-707 card based on IQ-775. Is it also a prototype or from the first retail batch?

Often, as cards were nearing completion, but not yet available (there was a ~2 month lag from mask ROM "cut-off" date to actual units received) samples were made using the EPROM cards to hold code (and in some cases provide RAM) with the new card's printed label on the front, for things like product reviews, loaners to volume corporate customer for evaluation, User Manual reviews, etc. There were never any Sharp-branded IC Application cards built on EPROM cards sold.

Regarding serial numbers, they are indeed unique for each specific product, not globally unique.

I will dig through my Sharp boxes and get the card model & s/n info and send it to some time in the next week or so.

Regarding the version numbers, typically "Western" products (meaning non-domestic Japan) were initially released in the US (for most such items, the largest market), under the OZ-xxxx model scheme, and then several months later to ROW under the IQ-xxxx model scheme, by which time some bugs had been found and corrected. In a few cases, some bugs were actually found prior to 1st delivery, but the mask ROM "cut-off date" had occurred, so in a few cases there were actually multiple versions in OZ products as well.

In the case of IQ-8B04M, which is v3.0, note that this is not functionally different from v2.0, but that it is in fact a multi-language version (which is what the trailing "M" in the model is for), and by that time PCSG had been acquired by Lucid.