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Sharp Pocket Computers

These are some of the most fun portable computing devices on the planet. Unlike most modern handheld devices, these are meant to be programmed directly, without use of development tools on a desktop system. For some reason, BASIC-programmable pocket computers only had a small presence in the United States but they were very popular in Japan and Europe. I used to look at the pocket computers in Radio Shack's catalog and always wanted my own PC-2, but as a junior-high kid I didn't have the money to afford one, and had to content myself with formula-programmable calculators and the family's IBM PC. A pocket computer shares many traits with a calculator, but trades off shortcuts that aid rapid numeric computation for expanded programmability and I/O. In the 1980s they were marketed to both students and professionals as a step up from programmable scientific calculators and a portable alternative to 8-bit microcomputers.

Most of the classic pocket computers are primarily programmed in BASIC. Machine-language is possible through the use of PEEK, POKE, and CALL. Newer pocket computers, which are targeted more for the educational market, added C and Assembly, although in at least some cases the C was a bytecode language instead of a true compiler. All of mine are old enough that they are limited to BASIC and machine language.

Sharp BASIC came in two main variants. The PC-1500 family had its own unique variant tailored around that machine's unique architecture and its 8-bit LH5801 CPU. The rest of Sharp's many pocket computers were based on the SC61860 and the later SC62015 CPUs (all are 8-bit), and used the other variant of BASIC (S-BASIC). This variant had at least three major revisions, with each revision adding new commands and significant changes to the tokenization of them.

My current collection consists of:

Radio Shack TRS-80 PC-2
Sharp PC-1262
Sharp PC-1360
Sharp PC-1500A

Web Resources

Here are some good resources for information and software for pocket computers on the web. Most of them are European, but have at least some English. In some cases, an automated translator like Google Translate might be useful.

The Pocket Computer Museum (English/French)
Sharp PC-1500 (TRS-80 PC-2) resource page
SharpCalc Pocket Computer Resources
Aldweb (English/French)
Simon's Pocket Computer Resources (English/German)
Tony's large personal collection (German)
Destroyedlolo's Sharp Page (English/French)