Samna Corp, Atlanta, Georgia has won pride of place on an ingenious new product that will be launched any day now in the US by Sharp Corp. The Sharp ZY-1000-S is an electronic typewriter – taking up only as much desk-top as an IBM Selectric III – that includes a complete IBM Personalike with Samna Word IV bundled, and the ability to run all the standard IBM Personal programs under MS-DOS from 2.2 up. It comes with 448Kb to 740Kb ROM and RAM, two 360Kb floppies – a Winchester is in the plan – and proprietary monochrome graphics board. The screen is a 2.5 long flat-panel liquid crystal display with full 80 characters by 25 lines, and there is also a 40 character strip display on the typewriter keyboard. The print mechanism is a Qume-compatible 22 chps daisywheel engine, and the machine has an RS-232 port to put on another screen or printer. The box will sell for about $3,395 in the US, and is being made at an annual rate of 10,000 in Osaka. Sharp also plans to push the ZY-1000 in Spain, Puerto Rico and South America.
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