Thread by @swartz_de

1/8 Hello my friends, it's been a while, but today I bring a new thread! It stars the handsome bugger pictured below. "But Rick," I hear your imaginary voices protest, "that's not a Pocket Computer!". Well right you are, sort of. #ポケコン

2/8 This beautiful #Sharp #IQ8200 comes courtesy of a nice chap in France. Although a great piece of kit, the real magic happens when you add this little IC-Card (#IQ871). A 128 KB #BASIC card which goes into the expansion slot on the Organizer. #ポケコン

3/8 Well, would you look at that! BASIC! Although the card only has A-T descriptors marking the sensor keys, the functions are identical to the ones on the IQ-707 pictured. Except the 2ndF key which is NCR / NPR on this card. #ポケコン

4/8 And what do you get? A pretty decent BASIC POCKET computer! Sadly, not the structured version introduced with the E500S/E650, but on par with the E500/E550 including sound, graphics and I/O. #ポケコン

5/8 You're getting a great Pocket Computer here. 40x8 line (240x64 Pixel) screen (the largest on any Sharp), 128 KB RAM, a clamshell device with a top notch keyboard and, at least in my tests, a somewhat faster device than an E500S (FOR-NEXT and LINE box fill). #ポケコン

6/8 One downside is that some characters needed for BASIC ("<" , ">", ";" ) can't be entered via the keyboard, but must be accessed using the "SYMBL" key. Also the character set and GPRINT endianness has been modified with regard to the E500. Not a deal breaker. #ポケコン

7/8 PEEK, POKE & CALL are implemented, but as I have no idea how everything is organized internally, playing around usually results in a lock up. I would love to be able to access the other organizer functions from within BASIC.
#ポケコン

8/8
So, there you have it. I grabbed the IQ-8200 for €5.50 bundled with a calculator, the IC-Card set me back another €50. The problem is finding one of the BASIC IC-Cards. ralf-beckmann.de has a list of cards you'll need to search for. #ポケコン

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