Always great to see these Sony items that usually are passing under collectors radar ! Particularly interesting the Personal Computer World issue from 1991 , a Sony laptop named Walkstation ! Presumably inspired by a computer Workstation and the portability of a Walkman , in 1995 Sony came up also with the name "Playstation" with a computer workstation in mind. The VW van with the old walkman logo is lovely , I wonder if it existed for real. Certainly it would be great to see more . Thanks for sharing ! PS. One question , what is the oldest Sony item(s) in your collection ?
I suspect the name was made up by Personal Computer World. As for the computer itself I don't think you would have found one in your local Sony centre. https://www.cbronline.com/news/sony_unveils_laptop_models_in_its_68030_based_news_unix_family/
Probably magazine's article is more informative on that. Some interesting info behind the story of Playstation name and logo. When Sony was trying to find a name for their new child to be born many names were proposed until a marketing executive suggested the word "Playstation" , problem was that it was already trademarked by Yamaha ! But they liked it and paid Yamaha an unknown sum to acquire it. This must have been 1993 , between October-November of the same year the "PS" logo finalized and in December 1994 the first Playstation was on the market.
Looking for details on the Sony Computers I found that Olivetti had used the name Walkstation https://www.cbronline.com/news/olivettis_flexible_walkstation_portables_support_xenix/ Thinking about it, Sony tended to change the end part of their name with Walkman, Discman, and Watchman, so Compman would have been closer to that theme. The official name of the series was NEWS Network Engineering Workstation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_NEWS Some more information about the high power (literally) portable on the cover https://randoc.wordpress.com/2020/02/27/sony-news-portable-workstation-nws-1250/
Very interesting , so it seems the magazine blended cleverly Triumph-Adler / Olivetti Walkstation series with Walkmans and Sony NEWS Portable Workstation NWS-1250 . By the way it seems Walkstation series was pretty advanced for the time with firsts like first laptop with touch-pad and also earned design awards. Certainly I would like to hold a Sony NWS-1250 but that's very unlikely to happen.
It seems that Sony was aiming at the same market as SUN which was what the company I was working for was buying at the time. Certainly not one each though. Back then you had to book time on one and then go to an Air Conditioned workstation room to use one. It seems that for many successful products like the SUN workstation there was a Japanese equivalent which was equally successful in Japan but was rarely seen in the rest of the world. Another example was the Sharp X68000, which seems to have been more advanced than the Amiga, but was never sold outside of Japan, although the main board of some Arcade Cabinet Games was based on it.
Machaneus asked what my oldest SONY was/is! I can not find my note book which lists the bulk of my collection but from memory I have a couple of items from the mid-60's.
I guess before mid-60's Sony models are few and hard to find especially in Europe , my oldest Sony should be a TR-710 transistor radio from 1958. Personal Computer market segment was never an easy route for the otherwise highly successful Sony company. Bellow is an extraction from the excellent book "Digital Dreams" (Author Paul Kunkel ,1999) : "For years , Sony management had tried (and failed) to break into the personal computer market . During the 1980's as American PC makers set the rules in an industry that would soon rival the personal electronics business in size and importance , Sony's Japanese orientation was a disadvantage . Computer operating systems designed to use Latin characters had difficulty translating kanji. As a result many businesses in Japan were slow to computerize. In Europe and America corporate demand fueled developments in hardware and software that drove prices down and resulted in forty percent of all American homes having a PC. Corporate demand in Japan was small , causing Sony to fall behind in the PC market . "
In a book about Commodore "On the edge" I recall reading that demand for the Commodore 64 in Japan collapsed, once equivalent Japanese machines became available. Maybe because of the language differences but more likely because Japanese consumers preferred products from Japanese manufacturers. I guess the reason MSX was such a success in Japan was that the machines were from familiar Japanese companies like Sanyo and Sony. Since this a Sony thread do you have any HitBits @SONY-BOY ? I recall seeing them in the Bristol Sony Centre. https://www.msx.org/wiki/Sony_HB-10B MSX was a moderate success in the UK but dominated by the Toshiba HX10 which is what I bought back in the day. I very much doubt that the £89 quoted was the launch price which I recall was more like £250 although they could well have been sold for that on clearance.
Sony's first real contribution to the computer industry was the development of the 3.5 inch disk system adopted as the standard by such firms as IBM in the early 1980's. Then of course the sound chips for the NES home computer system, then co-developer of the MSX home computing system, the aformentioned arcade games benefited from some substantial sony input and finally playstation.
I would have been surprised if you didn't. Looking on Ebay I just spotted this one which seems to have a bit of an identity crisis (and a missing key) https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/MSX2-SON...607059?hash=item48eb04d253:g:~8AAAOSw6MxfM4U3
That is an MSX2 which, to my knowledge, never got officially sold by any of the manufacturers in the UK. The main problem with MSX1 was that the Floppy Drives cost more than the computers. Completed prices seem to be all over the place To me this was a bargain https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Sony-Hit...=true&nordt=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557 while this was pushing the upper limits https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Sony-HIT...=true&nordt=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557
Sadly this ( https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Sony-Hit...=true&nordt=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557 ) has gone and I did not see anything but the second link shows some real eye candy...lovely unit and I would pay that price to secure it for the collection.
That must have timed out in the last couple of hours. It was the same model computer with the box, all the literature and even some Sony stickers on it describing the features, which finished at about £90 after an auction.
