The is a Japanese

personal computer A personal computer (PC) is a multi-purpose microcomputer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use. Personal computers are intended to be operated directly by an end user, rather than by a computer expert or tech ...

, built by

Fujitsu is a Japanese multinational information and communications technology equipment and services corporation, established in 1935 and headquartered in Tokyo. Fujitsu is the world's sixth-largest IT services provider by annual revenue, and the la ...

from February 1989 to the summer of 1997. It started as a proprietary PC variant intended for

multimedia Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms such as text, audio, images, animations, or video into a single interactive presentation, in contrast to tradi ...

applications and

PC games A personal computer game, also known as a PC game or computer game, is a type of video game played on a personal computer (PC) rather than a video game console or arcade machine. Its defining characteristics include: more diverse and user-det ...

, but later became more compatible with IBM PC compatibles. In 1993, the

FM Towns Marty The FM Towns Marty is a fifth-generation home video game console released in 1993 by Fujitsu, exclusively for the Japanese market. It is often claimed to be the first 32-bit CD-based home video game system, although it has a 16-bit data bus, jus ...

was released, a game console compatible with existing FM Towns games. The "FM" part of the name means "Fujitsu Micro" like their earlier products, while the "Towns" part is derived from the code name the system was assigned while in development, "Townes". This refers to

Charles Townes Charles Hard Townes (July 28, 1915 – January 27, 2015) was an American physicist. Townes worked on the theory and application of the maser, for which he obtained the fundamental patent, and other work in quantum electronics associated w ...

, one of the winners of the 1964

Nobel Prize in Physics ) , image = Nobel Prize.png , alt = A golden medallion with an embossed image of a bearded man facing left in profile. To the left of the man is the text "ALFR•" then "NOBEL", and on the right, the text (smaller) "NAT•" then " ...

, following a custom of Fujitsu at the time to code name PC products after

Nobel Prize The Nobel Prizes ( ; sv, Nobelpriset ; no, Nobelprisen ) are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." Alfre ...

winners. The e in "Townes" was dropped when the system went into production to make it clearer that the term was to be pronounced like the word "towns" rather than the potential "tow-nes".

History

decided to release a new home computer after the

FM-7 The FM-7 ("Fujitsu Micro 7") is a home computer created by Fujitsu. It was first released in 1982 and was sold in Japan and Spain. It is a stripped-down version of Fujitsu's earlier FM-8 computer, and during development it was referred to as the ...

was technologically overcome by NEC's

PC-8801 The , commonly shortened to PC-88, are a brand of Zilog Z80-based 8-bit home computers released by Nippon Electric Company (NEC) in 1981 and primarily sold in Japan. The PC-8800 series sold extremely well and became one of the three major Japa ...

. During the life of the FM-7, Fujitsu learnt that software sales drove hardware sales, and in order to acquire usable software quickly, the new computer was to be based on Fujitsu's "FMR50" system architecture. The FMR50 system, released at 1986, was another x86/DOS-based computer similar to NEC's popular

PC-9801 The , commonly shortened to PC-98 or , is a lineup of Japanese 16-bit and 32-bit personal computers manufactured by NEC from 1982 to 2000. The platform established NEC's dominance in the Japanese personal computer market, and, by 1999, more ...

. The FMR50 computers were sold with moderate success in Japanese offices, particularly in Japanese government offices. There were hundreds of software packages available for the FMR, including

Lotus 1-2-3 Lotus 1-2-3 is a discontinued spreadsheet program from Lotus Software (later part of IBM). It was the first killer application of the IBM PC, was hugely popular in the 1980s, and significantly contributed to the success of IBM PC-compatible ...

WordStar WordStar is a word processor application for microcomputers. It was published by MicroPro International and originally written for the CP/M-80 operating system, and later written also for MS-DOS and other 16-bit computing, 16-bit PC OSes. Rob Ba ...

Multiplan Multiplan is spreadsheet program developed by Microsoft and introduced in 1982 as a competitor to VisiCalc. Multiplan was released first for computers running CP/M; it was developed using a Microsoft proprietary p-code C compiler as part of ...

, and dBASE III. With this basis of compatibility, the more multimedia-friendly FM Towns was created. NEC's PC-9801 computers were widespread and dominated in the 1980s, at one point reaching 70% of the 16/32-bit computer market. However, the early models had limited graphics (640×400 with 16 of 4096 colors) and sounds (4-operator/3 voice monaural FM sounds + 3 channel SSG sounds). Just as Commodore saw an opening for the

Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore International, Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and sign ...

in some global markets against the IBM PC, a computer with improved graphics and sound was considered to overcome the PC-9801 in the home-use field in Japan. With many multimedia innovations for its time, the FM Towns was that system, though for a number of reasons it never broke far beyond the boundaries of its niche market status. Eventually the FM Towns lost much of its uniqueness by adding a

DOS/V DOS/V is a Japanese computing initiative starting in 1990 to allow DOS on IBM PC compatibles with VGA cards to handle double-byte (DBCS) Japanese text via software alone. It was initially developed from PC DOS by IBM for its PS/55 machines ...

(PC clone plus DOS with native Japanese language support) compatibility mode switch, until Fujitsu finally discontinued making FM Towns specific hardware and software and moved to focus on the IBM PC clones (Fujitsu FMV) that many Japanese manufacturers—who previously were not players in the PC market—were building by the mid to late 1990s. To this day, Fujitsu is known for its laptop PCs globally, and FM Towns (and Marty) users have been relegated to a small community of aficionados.

Overview

Several variants were built; the first system (FM TOWNS model1 and model2) is based on an

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the devel ...

80386DX processor running at a clock speed of 16

MHz The hertz (symbol: Hz) is the unit of frequency in the International System of Units (SI), equivalent to one event (or cycle) per second. The hertz is an SI derived unit whose expression in terms of SI base units is s−1, meaning that one h ...

, with the option of adding an

80387 x87 is a floating-point-related subset of the x86 architecture instruction set. It originated as an extension of the 8086 instruction set in the form of optional floating-point coprocessors that worked in tandem with corresponding x86 CPUs. Thes ...

FPU, features one or two

megabyte The megabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. Its recommended unit symbol is MB. The unit prefix ''mega'' is a multiplier of (106) in the International System of Units (SI). Therefore, one megabyte is one million bytes o ...

s of

RAM Ram, ram, or RAM may refer to: Animals * A male sheep * Ram cichlid, a freshwater tropical fish People * Ram (given name) * Ram (surname) * Ram (director) (Ramsubramaniam), an Indian Tamil film director * RAM (musician) (born 1974), Dutch ...

(with a possible maximum of 6 MB), one or two 3.5"

floppy disk A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, or a diskette) is an obsolescent type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined ...

drives, a

PCMCIA The Personal Computer Memory Card International Association (PCMCIA) was a group of computer hardware manufacturers, operating under that name from 1989 to 2009. Starting with the PCMCIA card in 1990 (the name later simplified to ''PC Card''), ...

memory card slot and a single-speed CD-ROM drive. Its package includes a

gamepad A gamepad is a type of video game controller held in two hands, where the fingers (especially thumbs) are used to provide input. They are typically the main input device for video game consoles. Features Gamepads generally feature a set of ...

, a

mouse A mouse ( : mice) is a small rodent. Characteristically, mice are known to have a pointed snout, small rounded ears, a body-length scaly tail, and a high breeding rate. The best known mouse species is the common house mouse (''Mus musculus' ...

and a

microphone A microphone, colloquially called a mic or mike (), is a transducer that converts sound into an electrical signal. Microphones are used in many applications such as telephones, hearing aids, public address systems for concert halls and pub ...

. The earlier, more distinctive models featuring a vertical CD-ROM tray on the front of the case (model1, model2, 1F, 2F, 1H, 2H, 10F and 20F) were often referred to as the "Gray" Towns, and were the ones most directly associated with the "FM Towns" brand. Most featured 3 memory expansion slots and used 72-pin non-parity SIMMs with a required timing of 100ns or less and a recommended timing of 60ns. Hard drives are not standard equipment, and are not required for most uses. The OS is loaded from CD-ROM by default. A SCSI Centronics 50/SCSI-1/Full-Pitch port is provided for connecting external SCSI disk drives, and is the most common way to connect a hard drive to an FM Towns PC. Although internal drives are rare, there is a hidden compartment with a SCSI 50-pin connector where a hard drive may be connected, however the power supply module does not typically provide the required Molex connector to power the drive. The video output is 15 kHz RGB (though some programs used a 31 kHz mode) using the same DB15 connector and pinouts as the PC-9801.

Operating system

The

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...

used is

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ...

3.0/3.1/95 and a graphical OS called Towns OS, based on

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few oper ...

and the

Phar Lap Phar Lap (4 October 1926 – 5 April 1932) was a champion New Zealand–bred Thoroughbred racehorse who is widely regarded as New Zealand's greatest racehorse ever. Achieving incredible success during his distinguished career, his initial u ...

DOS extender A DOS extender is a computer software program running under DOS that enables software to run in a protected mode environment even though the host operating system is only capable of operating in real mode. DOS extenders were initially developed ...

(RUN386.EXE). Most games for the system were written in

protected mode In computing, protected mode, also called protected virtual address mode, is an operational mode of x86-compatible central processing units (CPUs). It allows system software to use features such as virtual memory, paging and safe multi-taskin ...

Assembly Assembly may refer to: Organisations and meetings * Deliberative assembly, a gathering of members who use parliamentary procedure for making decisions * General assembly, an official meeting of the members of an organization or of their representa ...

and C using the Phar Lap DOS extender. These games usually utilize the Towns OS API (

TBIOS The is a Japanese personal computer, built by Fujitsu from February 1989 to the summer of 1997. It started as a proprietary PC variant intended for multimedia applications and Personal computer game, PC games, but later became more compatible w ...

) for handling several graphic modes, sprites, sounds, a mouse, gamepads, and CD-audio. The FM Towns is capable of booting its graphical Towns OS straight from CD in 1989 - two years before Amiga CDTV booted its GUI-based AmigaOS 1.3 from internal CD drive and the CD-bootable

System 7 System 7, codenamed "Big Bang", and also known as Mac OS 7, is a graphical user interface-based operating system for Macintosh computers and is part of the classic Mac OS series of operating systems. It was introduced on May 13, 1991, by Apple Co ...

was released for the

Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and software en ...

in 1991, and five years before the

El Torito El Torito ( Spanish for "the little bull") is an American chain that serves Mexican food. El Torito operates 69 restaurants primarily in California.CD-ROM, the FM TOWNS has a "hidden C:"

ROM Rom, or ROM may refer to: Biomechanics and medicine * Risk of mortality, a medical classification to estimate the likelihood of death for a patient * Rupture of membranes, a term used during pregnancy to describe a rupture of the amniotic sac * ...

drive in which a minimum

system, CD-ROM driver and MSCDEX.EXE are installed. This minimal DOS system runs first, and the DOS system reads and executes the Towns OS IPL stored in CD-ROM after that. The Towns OS CD-ROM has an IPL, MS-DOS system (IO.SYS), DOS extender, and Towns

API An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how ...

(TBIOS). A minimal DOS system that allows the CD-ROM drive to be accessed is contained in a system

; this, coupled with Fujitsu's decision to charge only a minimal license fee for the inclusion of a bare-bones Towns OS on game CD-ROMs, allows game developers to make games bootable directly from CD-ROM without the need for a boot floppy or hard disk. Various

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which i ...

and

BSD The Berkeley Software Distribution or Berkeley Standard Distribution (BSD) is a discontinued operating system based on Research Unix, developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Be ...

distributions have also been ported to the FM Towns system, including

Debian Debian (), also known as Debian GNU/Linux, is a Linux distribution composed of free and open-source software, developed by the community-supported Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock on August 16, 1993. The first version of De ...

and Gentoo. A version of

GNU GNU () is an extensive collection of free software Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any ...

called GNU for FM Towns was released in 1990.

Graphics

The FM Towns features a custom Fujitsu graphics chip, enabling video modes ranging from 320×200 to 720×512 resolutions, with 16 to 32,768 simultaneous colors out of a possible 4096 to 16 million (depending on the video mode); most of these video modes have two

memory Memory is the faculty of the mind by which data or information is encoded, stored, and retrieved when needed. It is the retention of information over time for the purpose of influencing future action. If past events could not be remembered ...

pages, and it allows the use of up to 1024 sprites of 16×16 pixels each. It also has a built-in font

for the display of

kanji are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese and are still used, along with the subse ...

characters. The system has the ability to overlay different video modes; for example, the 320×200 video mode with 32,768 colors can be overlaid with a 640×480 mode using 16 colors, which allows games to combine high-color graphics with high-resolution kanji text. It uses 640 KB of

video RAM Dual-ported video RAM, or VRAM, is a dual-ported variant of dynamic RAM (DRAM), which was once commonly used to store the framebuffer in graphics adapters. Note that most computers and game consoles do not use this form of memory, and dual-por ...

, including 512 KB

VRAM Video random access memory (VRAM) is dedicated computer memory used to store the pixels and other graphics data as a framebuffer to be rendered on a computer monitor. This is often different technology than other computer memory, to facilitate ...

and 128 KB sprite RAM. Sprite layer: *

Resolution Resolution(s) may refer to: Common meanings * Resolution (debate), the statement which is debated in policy debate * Resolution (law), a written motion adopted by a deliberative body * New Year's resolution, a commitment that an individual ma ...

: 256×240

pixel In digital imaging, a pixel (abbreviated px), pel, or picture element is the smallest addressable element in a raster image, or the smallest point in an all points addressable display device. In most digital display devices, pixels are the s ...

s *

Colors Color (American English) or colour (British English) is the visual perceptual property deriving from the spectrum of light interacting with the photoreceptor cells of the eyes. Color categories and physical specifications of color are associa ...

: 256 on screen out of 32,768 palette * Sprite RAM: 128 KB (8 KB attributes, 120 KB pattern/colour data) * Maximum sprite count: Up to 1024 on screen * Sprite size: 16×16 pixels * Colors per sprite: 16FM Towns video hardware - MAME source
/ref> * Overlay support: Bitmap modes 1-11 Up to two graphical layers can be overlaid, whether it is two bitmap layers, or the sprite layer with a bitmap background layer. The latter is useful for

action games An action game is a video game genre that emphasizes physical challenges, including hand–eye coordination and reaction-time. The genre includes a large variety of sub-genres, such as fighting games, beat 'em ups, shooter games, and platform ga ...

, though the sprite function is not as advanced as that of rival

32-bit In computer architecture, 32-bit computing refers to computer systems with a processor, memory, and other major system components that operate on data in 32- bit units. Compared to smaller bit widths, 32-bit computers can perform large calcula ...

computer, the

Sharp X68000 The is a home computer created by Sharp Corporation. It was first released in 1987 and sold only in Japan. The initial model has a 10 MHz Motorola 68000 CPU, 1 MB of RAM, and lacks a hard drive. The final model was released in 1993 ...

. When the sprite layer is used, it is rendered to VRAM layer 1 on top, with the bitmap background as VRAM layer 0 below. When two bitmap layers are used, then both are rendered to VRAM layers 0 and 1.

CPU

The following is a list of models and the CPUs they contain from the factory. * 80386SX (16 MHz) : UX, Marty, Marty II, Car Marty * 80386SX (20 MHz) : UG * 80386DX (16 MHz) : CX * 80386DX (20 MHz) : HG * 80486SX (20 MHz) : HR, UR * 80486SX (25 MHz) : ME * 80486SX (33 MHz) : MA, MF, Fresh, FreshTV, Fresh-T, EA * 80486DX2 (66 MHz) : MX, Fresh-E, Fresh-ES, Fresh-ET, HA * 486DX4 (100 MHz) : Fresh-FS, Fresh-FT * Pentium (Socket4/60 MHz) : HB * Pentium (Socket5/90 MHz) : HC FMV Towns * Pentium (Socket5/90 MHz) : Fresh GT, Fresh GS * Pentium (Socket5/120 MHz) : Model H

Sound

The FM Towns system is able to play regular

audio CD Compact Disc Digital Audio (CDDA or CD-DA), also known as Digital Audio Compact Disc or simply as Audio CD, is the standard format for audio compact discs. The standard is defined in the ''Red Book'', one of a series of Rainbow Books (named ...

s, and also supports the use of 8 PCM voices and 6 FM channels, using the Ricoh RF5c68 and

Yamaha YM2612 The YM2612, a.k.a. OPN2, is a sound chip developed by Yamaha. It is a member of Yamaha's OPN family of FM synthesis chips, and is derived from the YM2203. The YM2612 is a six-channel FM synthesizer. It was used in several game and computer syste ...

sound chips, respectively. The system has ports in the front to accommodate

karaoke Karaoke (; ; , clipped compound of Japanese ''kara'' "empty" and ''ōkesutora'' "orchestra") is a type of interactive entertainment usually offered in clubs and bars, where people sing along to recorded music using a microphone. The music i ...

, LEDs to indicate volume level, and software to add popular voice-altering effects such as echoes. Games on the FM Towns regularly use Red Book Audio CD music tracks, especially if they are designed specifically for the Fujitsu system. Games ported from the PC-9801, for instance, might have used only PCM/FM music. This was a novelty and innovation far ahead of other PCs of the time made possible by the standard CD-ROM drive found in every FM Towns computer.

Ricoh RF5c68

The Ricoh RF5c68 is an eight-channel

sound chip A sound chip is an integrated circuit (chip) designed to produce audio signals through digital, analog or mixed-mode electronics. Sound chips are typically fabricated on metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) mixed-signal chips that proces ...

developed by

Ricoh is a Japanese multinational imaging and electronics company. It was founded by the now-defunct commercial division of the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research (Riken) known as the ''Riken Concern'', on 6 February 1936 as . Ricoh's he ...

. It is notably used in Fujitsu's FM Towns computer series, along with Sega's System 18 and

System 32 System 32 may refer to: *IBM System/32, a computer. * System32, a special folder in the Windows operating system containing systems and libraries. * Sega System 32 Sega is a video game developer, publisher, and hardware development company head ...

arcade game system boards. The RF5c68 supports eight 8-bit PCM channels, with 19.6

kHz The hertz (symbol: Hz) is the unit of frequency in the International System of Units (SI), equivalent to one event (or cycle) per second. The hertz is an SI derived unit whose expression in terms of SI base units is s−1, meaning that one h ...

or variable

sampling rate In signal processing, sampling is the reduction of a continuous-time signal to a discrete-time signal. A common example is the conversion of a sound wave to a sequence of "samples". A sample is a value of the signal at a point in time and/or sp ...

Audio bit depth In digital audio using pulse-code modulation (PCM), bit depth is the number of bits of information in each sample, and it directly corresponds to the resolution of each sample. Examples of bit depth include Compact Disc Digital Audio, whi ...

ranges from

8-bit In computer architecture, 8-bit integers or other data units are those that are 8 bits wide (1 octet). Also, 8-bit central processing unit (CPU) and arithmetic logic unit (ALU) architectures are those that are based on registers or data buses of ...

10-bit In computing, a word is the natural unit of data used by a particular processor design. A word is a fixed-sized datum handled as a unit by the instruction set or the hardware of the processor. The number of bits or digits in a word (the ''word s ...

.Ricoh RF5C68 PCM controller - MAME source
/ref>

References

External links

FM Towns entry
at Old-Computers.com
The world of FM Towns

UNZ (うんづ) - An FM Towns emulator

FM Towns/Bochs
– An FM Towns emulator based on

Bochs Bochs (pronounced "box") is a portable IA-32 and x86-64 IBM PC compatible emulator and debugger mostly written in C++ and distributed as free software under the GNU Lesser General Public License. It supports emulation of the processor(s) (includi ...

The Collectible Ultima
site referencing the Ultima VI for FM Towns.

(Japanese)
How to create and format an HD image and installing MS-DOS with full CD support in it using the Unz emulator

FM Towns entry
at GameEx.com {{DEFAULTSORT:Fm Towns Home video game consoles 8086-based home computers Computer-related introductions in 1989 Products introduced in 1989