The

Panasonic is a Japanese multinational electronics manufacturer, headquartered in Kadoma, Osaka, Kadoma, Japan. It was founded in 1918 as in Fukushima-ku, Osaka, Fukushima by Kōnosuke Matsushita. The company was incorporated in 1935 and renamed and c ...

JR-200 (Panasonic Personal Computer (PPC)) was a simple, relatively early (1983),

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 bu ...

home computer Home computers were a class of microcomputers that entered the market in 1977 and became common during the 1980s. They were marketed to consumers as affordable and accessible computers that, for the first time, were intended for the use of a s ...

with a

chiclet keyboard A chiclet keyboard is a computer keyboard with keys that form an array of small, flat rectangular or lozenge-shaped rubber or plastic keys that look like erasers or " Chiclets", a brand of chewing gum manufactured in the shape of small squares ...

somewhat similar to the VTech Laser 200. It's part of the JR Series. Made of silver grey plastic, it had a black matte area around the keyboard area. Most of the 63 rubber chiclet keys were grey, with some (the more important) keys in marine blue, and with white control and break keys. Each of the grey keys could produce any of five inputs: Upper and lower-case letters (or numbers and symbols), two graphic characters (similar to the graphic symbols of

PETSCII PETSCII (PET Standard Code of Information Interchange), also known as CBM ASCII, is the character set used in Commodore Business Machines' 8-bit home computers. This character set was first used by the PET from 1977, and was subsequently use ...

), and a BASIC

keyword Keyword may refer to: Computing * Index term, a term used as a keyword to documents in an information system such as a catalog or a search engine * Keyword (Internet search), a word or phrase typically used by bloggers or online content creator to ...

. Two keys, and , are used to switch back and forth between character and graphics modes. Holding down the key while pressing any grey key produced a BASIC keyword. In total the JR-200 had 253 built-in characters. 96 letters, numbers and symbols, 5

Greek letters The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BC. It was derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and is the earliest known alphabetic script to systematically write vowels as we ...

, 63 graphical symbols, 79 Japanese (

katakana is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji). The word ''katakana'' means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived fr ...

) symbols and 10 music and other symbols. All symbols formed in an 8x8 pixel matrix, and the JR-200 could display 32 characters per line and 24 lines. All relevant keys would auto-repeat when pressed continuously. The JR-200 used a very unusual 8-bit

CPU A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor, or just processor, is the primary processor in a given computer. Its electronic circuitry executes instructions of a computer program, such as arithmetic, log ...

, the

MN1800A MN18 is a blue supergiant in the constellation of Circinus, about 5.6 kiloparsecs away, or about 18,300 light years away, likely in the open cluster Lynga 3. MN18 is surrounded by a bipolar nebula, quite uncommon around blue supergiants, ...

, which was compatible with the

Motorola Motorola, Inc. () was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois. It was founded by brothers Paul and Joseph Galvin in 1928 and had been named Motorola since 1947. Many of Motorola's products had been ...

MC6802, a slightly improved version of the

Motorola 6800 The 6800 ("''sixty-eight hundred''") is an 8-bit microprocessor designed and first manufactured by Motorola in 1974. The MC6800 microprocessor was part of the M6800 Microcomputer System (later dubbed ''68xx'') that also included serial and parall ...

. It ran at a slow 0.89 MHz (according to unconfirmed information). There is also a second processor, the 4-bit MN1544CJR, which is used for I/O and contains 128 bytes of RAM plus four kilobytes of ROM. A version of the JR-200 called the Panasonic JR-200U was developed for the North American and European markets and was announced in January 1983.

JR-Basic

The JR-200 did not use

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

BASIC Basic or BASIC may refer to: Science and technology * BASIC, a computer programming language * Basic (chemistry), having the properties of a base * Basic access authentication, in HTTP Entertainment * Basic (film), ''Basic'' (film), a 2003 film ...

, but its own dialect, one that was designed to be mostly compatible with Microsoft BASIC.

JR-BASIC JR-BASIC is a dialect of the BASIC programming language running on the Matsushita JR series of microcomputers. Although it's its own dialect, it was designed to be mostly compatible with Microsoft BASIC. Since it was developed for low-cost entr ...

was a greatly extended BASIC, with, (for example) graphical commands such as COLOR, (which selected character color, background color and display mode) and PLOT which permitted direct addressing of the low resolution graphics mode (64×48, using

text semigraphics Text-based semigraphics, pseudographics, or character graphics is a primitive method used in early text mode video hardware to emulate raster graphics without having to implement the logic for such a display mode. There are two different ways ...

characters, which represented pixel blocks that used one-quarter of each character). Eight colors were available for the background and foreground use: blue, red, magenta, green, cyan, yellow, white and black. By re-programming a part of the character-set a limited high resolution graphics mode was achievable with a resolution of 256×192. The BASIC also supported on-screen editing and direct execution of BASIC instructions. the machine came with 32K of RAM, and had 30,716 bytes free for a Basic program. User memory could be expanded to 40K. JR-BASIC itself occupied 16K of ROM, while the character set video memory and I/O used another 6K. The JR-200 ROM also contained a

machine code monitor A machine code monitor ( machine language monitor) is software that allows a user to enter commands to view and change memory address, memory locations on a computer, with options to load and save memory contents from/to secondary storage. Some f ...

to enter and execute machine code programs.

Sound

The JR-200 was capable of producing a wide range of sounds. The JR-200 had a general purpose timer, the MN1544CJR I/O chip, with three of the timer outputs being hooked up to generate

square wave Square wave may refer to: *Square wave (waveform) A square wave is a non-sinusoidal waveform, non-sinusoidal periodic waveform in which the amplitude alternates at a steady frequency between fixed minimum and maximum values, with the same ...

tones. The BASIC supported the sound capabilities with commands ranging from a simple BEEP command (BEEP 1 producing an 880 Hz "middle octave A" sound), to the SOUND (f, d) command which took two numerical parameters for frequency and duration, and the PLAY and TEMPO commands which could take multiple commands to play a tone over a 5-octave range, and played them in the background while the BASIC program continued. Clever use of the three square wave voices could be used to generate a range of other sounds, such as explosions. A keystroke could be accompanied by an audible feedback signal. Audio was output from an RCA (Tulip) connector onto which an eight

ohm Ohm (symbol Ω) is a unit of electrical resistance named after Georg Ohm. Ohm or OHM may also refer to: People * Georg Ohm (1789–1854), German physicist and namesake of the term ''ohm'' * Germán Ohm (born 1936), Mexican boxer * Jörg Ohm (1 ...

speaker could be directly connected, but the JR-200 also had a small built-in speaker. On the back of the device there was a volume control potentiometer that controlled both the internal and external speaker.

I/O connectors

On the back of the device you could also find an eight-pin

DIN connector The DIN connector is an electrical signal connector that was standardized by the (DIN), the German Institute for Standards, in the mid 1950s, initially with three pins for mono, but when stereo connections and gear appeared in the late 1950s, v ...

for a cassette recorder with which you could load programs at 2400 bit/s. Then two connectors for video output, an RCA connector RF output and an eight-pins DIN connector that could output

NTSC NTSC (from National Television System Committee) is the first American standard for analog television, published and adopted in 1941. In 1961, it was assigned the designation System M. It is also known as EIA standard 170. In 1953, a second ...

or RGB video. The JR-200UP variant outputs composite PAL and RGB. Two other connectors provided a centronics compatible printer port, (supported by BASIC with LPRINT, LLIST and HCOPY, a "screen dump" command) and an expansion interface port. The expansion port connector also had signal lines for an RS232 serial connection which BASIC supported with several commands, but its main use was to connect a 5¼-inch

floppy disk A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, a diskette, or a disk) is a 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 with a ...

drive. On its left side the JR-200 had two DB-9 joystick connectors which could be connected to standard (Atari style) joysticks, which could be read by the BASIC STICK command. In contrast to most other home computers of the time the JR-200 did not use an external transformer unit but had a built-in, completely contained, power supply.

Reception

The computer received favorable reviews on its launch.

Creative Computing ''Creative Computing'' was one of the earliest magazines covering the microcomputer revolution. Published from October 1974 until December 1985, the magazine covered the spectrum of hobbyist/home/personal computing in a more accessible format t ...

wrote "The Panasonic JR-200 is one of the nicest new computers to make the scene in some time."

References

External links

Atarimagazine article scan

Armchair Arcade covers the system

JR-200 at old-computers.com

Discovering the Panasonic JR-200: programming resources
{{Authority control Home computers JR-200 68xx-based computers Computer-related introductions in 1984 ja:JR-200