One of the rarest? The Sharp PC-2000 Computer Boombox from 1979

What an oddity. Translating from
https://design.sharp.co.jp/design_column/1979_pc2000
gives

1979 (Showa 54) RateCaputa
April 24, 2023
IN HISTORY
--Sharp is in history. Design is in history. Museum 40th anniversary joint project "IN HISTORY"--

Hello. This is Fujiwara from the Sharp Museum. In this series, museum guides Fujiwara and Nakaya talk freely about Sharp's products and history. We hope that you will be interested in Sharp's history, even if just a little.

This time we will be talking about the Latte Caputa "PC-2000" from 1979 (Showa 54).


The Sharp products housed, exhibited, and introduced here at the Sharp Museum include products that have been recognized as Heritage of Industrial Modernization, Important Historical Materials for Science and Technology (Future Technology Heritage), Information Processing Technology Heritage, and IEEE Milestones, as well as products that were welcomed by the world with amazement and eventually became mainstream at the time, as well as unique products that trace the trial and error and challenges taken by our predecessors.

The Latte Caputa that we will introduce this time also has its own drama.

Even the employees didn't know about this mysterious masterpiece!
Only 200 units of the "Latte Caputa " were produced in 1979. Few people know of its existence, and only a few remain , making it a truly "phantom product" known only to those in the know.


Since it was put on display at the museum, several people each year stop to look, exclaiming, "Wow, so that's where it was!" with expressions of amazement on their faces, as if they had unearthed a rare fossil, and take their time to observe it and take photos.

Can you guess what it is from its appearance and name
?

"Ra" is the "Ra" of radio

"Te" is "television"

"Ka" is "cassette"

What about the "puter"?
When you pull out the part in front, there is a keyboard hidden inside.


Yes, this is a "TV boombox with a built-in computer." The keyboard is retractable, likely to make it easier to carry around.

I wanted to know more about why this combination was chosen, so I looked through old product catalogs.

A unique creation born from addition
I searched the stored catalog archives by release year and category, but I couldn't find it in the TV or audio equipment category. It wasn't in the air conditioning, kitchen, or home equipment category, so I skipped it...and then I found it! It was in the office equipment category, right next to calculators!

The story behind the creation of the Lattekaputa is quite unusual, as the first unit was developed by a team of electronic calculator experts.

The original idea for a pocket calculator was a desktop electronic calculator that was perfected by Sharp after much trial and error in the early 1960s , when the world was competing in research into large computers, and which was an easily portable computer. This later came to be called a "pocket calculator."

By the time the Latte Caputa was released in 1979 (Showa 54), the evolution of calculator technology had reached saturation, and designs were beginning to diversify and functions were becoming more integrated.

Speaking of combining functions, some people may recall the Solocal (1978), which combined a calculator and an abacus, or the Cooking Refrigerator (1986), which incorporated a microwave oven into a refrigerator.

The developers at the time had the same free-spirited boyish ideas that led them to add a "computer" to the "ratecassette (radio + television + cassette tape recorder)."


The passion for development and DNA that continues to this day
The Latte Caputa is said to be a "phantom". I spoke to a developer at the time about the inside story, so I'd like to share a little bit of it with you.

Although the name "Latekaputa" sounds a bit like a joke, the development was done very seriously. At the time, the development was started by four members who specialized in calculators.

To study television circuits, I obtained circuit diagrams for a radio cassette player and diagrams of component layouts for a printed circuit board from the Television Technology Department, and spent about a month doing trial and error and static electricity tests.

In addition to the circuitry, the complex combination of mechanical components had to be fitted into a compact body - a design that was extremely difficult given the technology available at the time - and complex software development was undertaken from scratch by a team of just four people - a truly monumental challenge.

Despite the many difficulties, as we steadily continued to work on development, one of our team members came up with a genius idea that rapidly advanced software development, and a colleague who happened to be sitting next to us took an interest in Lattekaputa and lent us all his help. We were able to steadily solve the problems and bring the product to market.


Looking back, working in an environment that allowed for such freedom of movement and a corporate culture that allowed him to take on such a reckless challenge was the greatest joy for him as an engineer, and he still feels proud that they were able to commercialize the product.

The story that a developer at the time told me was a really inspiring one.

Even today, we often see people with the same ideas gather together like clubs across departmental boundaries to discuss and try out various things. The story behind the birth of the Latte Caputa is more than 40 years old, but through this somewhat unusual product, I felt the DNA of Sharp that is still passed down today.


So it appears to be a Skunkworks type project designed by the calculator department.

To put things into context, the same year Sharp launched the MZ80K computer which went on to be a big success, selling over 100000.
https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/2867/sharp-mz-80k/
It wouldn't surprise me if it outsold the Apple II in Europe where its main competition then was the Commodore Pet and Tandy TRS80. I wasn't surprised to find an MZ80K on eBay UK.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/267110378715

What was puzzling me was how they could fit an MZ80K motherboard in such a small unit.
We now know they were unrelated. The PC2000 name implies that as PC was used on the Sharp
pocket computers, while the MZ80K was the second in a long line of MZ series Sharp computers.


A final bonus picture of the MZ80K. I wonder how many of the Manchester United players knew what is was

From https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/sport/football/pictured-manchester-united-kit-launch-7388441

 

Wow, what an amazing machine! Is this the first laptop?

 

Some interesting information in the link. Maybe it is the translation but I was surprised at the comment:

"Personally, I only became aware of microcomputers and the like in the late 1980s, so I never had a chance to see them in stores (there were no stores in my neighborhood that stocked them in the category of microcomputers, and in the category of radio cassette players, all manufacturers looked the same), and since they were probably removed from stores, I probably never even knew about them. Even if I had heard about them on some occasion, I would have forgotten about them immediately, and it wasn't until a tweet from Sharp (not the one mentioned above, but much later) that I became aware of their existence."

I have commented before how from 1981 onwards in the U.K. the Government was telling everyone that if their children didn't become computer literate they would be unemployable. There again that might explain how in the 1980s the U.K. had more computers per-capita than any other country.

Back to Sharp, an advantage they had along with Commodore is that they had their own IC fabrication facilities. In a book about Commodore one of the engineers said that meant they could fabricate an IC to try out in less than a week. Using external companies you would be waiting much longer and paying far more.

Since you mentioned printers, in 1983 one of the cheapest printers you could buy was actually a pen plotter made by Sharp and sold by Radio Shack.



For even less money you could buy a tiny printer to go with their Sharp made Pocket Computer.
I guess the calculator department ditched the idea of using a bulky CRT and went back to designing products like this.
It was interesting to read in a linked article how Sharp thought the pocket computer would be a flop while Radio Shack recognised it as a hit product.


Since the MZ80K gets mentioned quite a bit here is a U.K. advert for one

From https://imgur.com/gallery/sharp-mz-80k-computer-early-80s-advertisement-RedBeBo

Back in the mid 1980s a colleague actually bought one used. In those days computers went from being the latest and greatest to hopelessly outdated in about five years.