} Sord Computer Corporation is a Japanese

electronics Electronics is a scientific and engineering discipline that studies and applies the principles of physics to design, create, and operate devices that manipulate electrons and other Electric charge, electrically charged particles. It is a subfield ...

company, founded in 1970 by the

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value in ways that generally entail beyond the minimal amount of risk (assumed by a traditional business), and potentially involving values besides simply economic ones. An entreprene ...

Takayoshi Shiina. From 1985 until 2018, it was a subsidiary of

Toshiba is a Japanese multinational electronics company headquartered in Minato, Tokyo. Its diversified products and services include power, industrial and social infrastructure systems, elevators and escalators, electronic components, semiconductors ...

and became known variously as Toshiba Personal Computer System Corporation and Toshiba Platform Solution Corporation. In 2018, Toshiba sold off the business and its name reverted to Sord Computer Corporation. It now focuses on embedded systems among other interests.

History

Early years

SORD was founded by Takayoshi Shiina in 1970 when he was 26 years old. Initially, the company wrote software for DEC

PDP PDP may refer to: Computing and technology * Packet Data Protocol in wireless GPRS/HSDPA networks * Parallel distributed processing in Connectionism#Parallel distributed processing, connectionism * Plasma display panel * Policy Decision Point in t ...

minicomputers, before it branched out into hardware production. The name SORD is a contraction of SOftware/haRDware, reflecting the dual focus of the company. Sord presented the SMP80/08 in 1973, one of the first

microcomputer A microcomputer is a small, relatively inexpensive computer having a central processing unit (CPU) made out of a microprocessor. The computer also includes memory and input/output (I/O) circuitry together mounted on a printed circuit board (P ...

s, using the

Intel 8008 The Intel 8008 ("''eight-thousand-eight''" or "''eighty-oh-eight''") is an early 8-bit microprocessor capable of addressing 16 KB of memory, introduced in April 1972. The 8008 architecture was designed by Computer Terminal Corporation (CTC) and ...

microprocessor A microprocessor is a computer processor (computing), processor for which the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit (IC), or a small number of ICs. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, a ...

. However, it did not have a commercial release. After the first general-purpose microprocessor, the

Intel 8080 The Intel 8080 is Intel's second 8-bit computing, 8-bit microprocessor. Introduced in April 1974, the 8080 was an enhanced successor to the earlier Intel 8008 microprocessor, although without binary compatibility.'' Electronic News'' was a week ...

, was announced in April 1974, Sord announced the SMP80/x series in May 1974. In 1977, SORD released the M200 Smart Home Computer, one of the first

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 ...

s. It was a

desktop computer A desktop computer, often abbreviated as desktop, is a personal computer designed for regular use at a stationary location on or near a desk (as opposed to a portable computer) due to its size and power requirements. The most common configuratio ...

that combined a

Zilog Z80 The Zilog Z80 is an 8-bit computing, 8-bit microprocessor designed by Zilog that played an important role in the evolution of early personal computing. Launched in 1976, it was designed to be Backward compatibility, software-compatible with the ...

CPU, keyboard,

CRT display A cathode-ray tube (CRT) is a vacuum tube containing one or more electron guns, which emit electron beams that are manipulated to display images on a phosphorescent screen. The images may represent electrical waveforms on an oscilloscope, ...

floppy disk drive 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 ...

and MF-DOS

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

into an integrated unit. This was followed by the M100 and various other versions of the M100/M200 series, plus the multi-user M223 and M243 computers. The SORD M23 followed in 1981 and become one of the most popular SORD computers. It was one of the first to see significant use outside Japan. In 1982, Sord released the M5, a

that primarily competed in the Japanese market. The M68, a dual 8/16 bit computer using both

68000 The Motorola 68000 (sometimes shortened to Motorola 68k or m68k and usually pronounced "sixty-eight-thousand") is a 16/32-bit complex instruction set computer (CISC) microprocessor, introduced in 1979 by Motorola Semiconductor Products Sector ...

and

Z80 The Zilog Z80 is an 8-bit microprocessor designed by Zilog that played an important role in the evolution of early personal computing. Launched in 1976, it was designed to be software-compatible with the Intel 8080, offering a compelling altern ...

CPUs, was released in Japan in 1983. The PIPS - Personal (or Pan) Information Processing System was released in 1980. This package was a combined spreadsheet and database business package. This was followed by PIPS-II in 1981, PIPS-III in 1982 and a complete rewrite (by a team led by Peter Hyde) as 4G-PIPS in 1986.

Under Toshiba ownership

Shiina was approached by a larger Japanese corporation in 1983 and advised to sell. He didn't - and in 1984, on the back of turnover of 35 billion yen and profit of 2 billion yen SORD found itself struggling with suppliers and the banks. SORD was sold to Toshiba in 1985. Under Toshiba, SORD went on to produce additional hardware such as the M68MX (with no Z80A) and M343SX-II multi-user computer and new versions of PIPS, a series of high performance IBM compatible machines and systems based on Alpha. Latterly, SORD (known at that point as Toshiba-TOPS) changed focus to primarily dealing with embedded systems.

Sell-off and restoration of 'Sord' name

In 2018, Toshiba sold Toshiba Platform Solution Corporation to Aspirant Group. Following this, the company name was changed back to Sord Computer Corporation. The company continues the focus on embedded systems begun under Toshiba.

Selected models

* Sord SMP80/08, 1972 * Sord SMP80/x series, 1974 * Sord M200 Smart Home Computer, 1977 * Sord M223 series, 1980 * Sord M68, 1982 *

Sord M5 The Sord M5 is a home computer launched by Sord Computer Corporation in 1982. Primarily the Sord M5 competed in the Japanese home computer market. It was also sold as the CGL M5 in the United Kingdom by Computer Games Limited and was reasonably po ...

, 1982 *

Sord M23P The Sord M23P was a "luggable" Japanese personal computer (weighed about 9 kg), manufactured by '' Sord Corp.'' from 1983. It was one of the first machines to use the 3½" disk drive produced by Sony is a Japanese multinational conglome ...

(1983),

luggable A portable computer is a computer designed to be easily moved from one place to another, as opposed to those designed to remain stationary at a single location such as desktop computer, desktops and workstations. These computers usually in ...

* Sord M685 Micro-mainframe, 1984 * Sord DF44H Floppy Disk Unit, 1984 * Sord M343SX-2 Multi-user computer, 1984 *

Sord IS-11 The Sord IS-11 is an A4-size, lightweight, portable Z80-based notebook computer. The IS-11 ('IS' stands for 'Integrated Software') had no operating system, but came with built-in word processing, spreadsheet, file manager and communication software ...

(1984),

notebook A notebook (also known as a notepad, writing pad, drawing pad, or legal pad) is a book or stack of paper pages that are often ruled and used for purposes such as note-taking, journaling or other writing, drawing, or scrapbooking and more. ...

Full list of products of Sord Computer Corporation

References

External links

Sord Computer Corporation homepage
(in Japanese) {{Authority control Computer hardware companies Computer companies of Japan Computer companies established in 1970 1970 establishments in Japan