Sony's First Computer – The SMC-70 from 1982 [video] • Hacker News Board

Post by rbanffy » Wed, Sep 16, 2026, 8:42 PM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #26

rbanffy wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so would have had a bigger software library available to it. The SMC-70 could run CP/M software. CP/M was the MS-DOS of its time.

Kind of, because while MS-DOS was compatible between PCs, CP/M depended pretty much on what 8 bit machine you had, and like UNIX required compilation from source for proper compatibility. FTL Modula-2 for example, had several low level portability modules depending on which CP/M machine you were actually using.

MS-DOS was “mostly” compatible across different machines but there were non-PC MS-DOS machines with different disk controllers and media recording formats, giving them better capacity or performance. Only machines that followed the IBM PC recording formats would be media-interchangeable.

Since the PC used off-the-shelf components, it was tempting to be compatible, but some cursed machines tried to be different.

I’m not sure how compatible are floppies from the Victor 9000 or Epson QX-10, but I know the Sanyo 550 (?) and the Mindset, which were not quite PC-compatibles could interchange media with a PC.