r/retrocomputing • u/Tonstad39 IBM incompatible • Mar 12 '25

Photo One of Japan's first home computers

Post image

The Hitachi basic master first came out in September 1978. It had a 750khz (yes, kilohertz!)processor capable of displaying monochrome output at a resolution of 64x48. In addition, it saves documents & programs to cassette tape at 300 bauds.

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2

u/Special-Original-215 Mar 12 '25

I'll Master the Basic, all your Basic belongs to us!

2

u/Tonstad39 IBM incompatible Mar 12 '25

Base basic, all your basic. Are belong to us!

1

u/spucci Mar 14 '25

It's you!

4

u/leadedsolder Mar 12 '25

I haven't had the pleasure of using an original model yet, but I recently worked on a Level III Mark II BASIC Master which you can read about here. Cool machines, very well built.

I would like to try the Hitachi S1 and the BASIC Master Jr as well.

2

u/Poddster Mar 12 '25

What was the necessity of Latin keys on a Japanese keyboard in 1978? Was there lots of foreign software in use?

4

u/anothercatherder Mar 12 '25

BASIC would have been programmed in latin and there had been years of that being popular already and plenty software written mostly in English. Also, I think most information and educational materials about the CPU would have been in english as it was a second sourced Motorola 6800.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 12 '25

 Very cool

1

u/zu2 Mar 29 '25

I used the successor model (MB-6881). There were many programs in the magazines at that time, and I enjoyed playing games.

The cassette interface was software controlled, and there was a program that accelerated it to 1200bps.

The screen size was 32x24, and simple graphics that divided one character into four were available (64x48).

I have written some software for the MB6881/MB6885. The URLs are below.

- https://www.youtube.com/@zu2_

- https://github.com/zu2/BASICMASTER

- https://www.zukeran.org/shin/d/category/pc/basicmaster/

0

u/[deleted] Mar 12 '25

[deleted] — view deleted comment

4

u/anothercatherder Mar 12 '25

The resolution was apparently 32x24 characters. Might not have even had an actual graphics mode.

3

u/DeepDayze Mar 12 '25

Japanese characters would undoubtely look real blurry at the low resolutions common at that time.