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X68000

Here is the first of a great family. It is the successor of the Sharp X1 family, shipped with a unique square screen monitor, fist in a grey case, then in black.

Instead of using the Zilog Z80, it uses a powerful Motorola MC 68000. This computer (and all its family) has great features (look at the emulator), it was more powerful than the other 68000 computers at this time (Atari ST or Amiga 500) : more colors or more hardware sprites, hardware scrolling, genlocking, perspective or playfields (up to 16) .

Unfortunately, it was never marketed outside Japan where it was and still is very very popular ! Too bad, I'm sure it would have a great success !! A very great range of games were developed for the X680x0 serie and the best arcade conversions were done on this computer.

It runs under Human 68K, an operating system which looks like CP/M 68 or MSDOS and uses a graphic user interface called VS.

Notice that the development is still active on that computer, several OSes have been ported on the X68000, the most famous are Minix and Unix NetBSD and all the GNU tools and there are some projects under development : XNeptune (a Ethernet card) or Ko-Windows (a 'NextStep-like' graphic environment).

It was followed by the X68000 Ace and Ace HD.