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

[rprosperi]

(07-19-2024 12:38 PM)Akuji Wrote:  I finally managed to collect all the IC cards from the western 8-series:

and

- I’ve never seen the OZ version of the 8C02 card, neither in the catalogs nor in the wild. Therefore, I assume it was never released in the US
- (OZ)/IQ-8B05 ”Form Manager (128Kb)” was in development for some time, but apparently, its release was canceled. The card is only mentioned in the 1993/1994 catalog (see the screenshot below), but it’s not reflected in the 1994/1995 catalog.
- The sequence of the 8C0(n) has missing 8C03. I assume the planned release of another card was ultimately scrapped here

Congratulations on completing a significant (and hard) objective.

Some comments on the questions:

I believe the 8CO2 card was sold in the US (as the OZ-8CO2) however it was not a popular card and not many were sold, hence few seen today.

I don't recall what the 8C03 was, and it is indeed possible this was cancelled, there were several that were.

The 8B05 shown may have been a (very, well too...) preliminary hint at database card project that was underway but ultimately shelved. Development began with Borland (dBase, not Paradox) but technology and the market were moving so fast at this time, that it was concluded that the small subset of functionality available on a Wizard would not be satisfying. A similar project was underway with Oracle at the same time, internally managed at Oracle by someone who would ultimately go on to much bigger things, Marc Benioff.

It's also possible that the 8B05 project Sharp UK published in that catalog was some other homegrown project we (in the US) were unaware of, but that seems unlikely.

And yet another possibility is an aborted attempt to make an organizer companion product for Apple's Hypercard application, but the Apple market at the time was too small to justify completing the project. Note that Apple was not directly involved in the development, but the discussions ultimately led to closer ties, and eventually in-turn to Sharp manufacturing the early Newtons (and it's own Newton clone).