website/content/museum/hitachi-mb-6890-basic-master-level-3.md

title, categories, types, origins, years, cpus, params

title	categories	types	origins	years	cpus	params
Hitachi MB-6890 / Basic Master Level 3	Computers	Home Computer	Japan	1980	Motorola 6809	name company company_name specs tabs photos links comments oc_id source MB-6890 / Basic Master Level 3 /companies/hitachi Hitachi label value NAME MB-6890 / Basic Master Level 3 label value MANUFACTURER Hitachi label value TYPE Home Computer label value ORIGIN Japan label value YEAR 1980 label value BUILT IN LANGUAGE Hitachi Level-3 Basic Version 1.0 (Copyright Microsoft) label value KEYBOARD QWERTY full-stroke keyboard, separated numeric keypad, 5 function keys label value CPU Motorola 6809 label value SPEED 1 Mhz label value RAM 48k ? label value VRAM 16k label value ROM 24k (Basic Interpreter) label value TEXT MODES 80 x 28 / 40 x 25 label value GRAPHIC MODES 80 x 100 / 160 x 100 / 160 x 200 / 320 x 200 / 640 x 200 label value COLORS 8 label value SOUND Unknown label value I/O PORTS 6 expansion slots, RS232c, Tape-recorder label value POWER SUPPLY Built-in PSU label value PERIPHERALS Tape-recorder, printer interface board, light-pen, Chinese character ROM board, 8088 CPU board, Disk Interface board, Z80 CPU board, RAM expansion boards photos links title subtitle text image MB 6890 null title subtitle text image THE KEYBOARD Thanks to [Ueda's Page](http://www.japan-net.ne.jp/~a-ueda/oldcom/) for this picture null title url text Ueda's Page http://www.japan-net.ne.jp/~a-ueda/oldcom/ Lot of infos and pictures here ! (japanese) author date text Michael Schipp (Australia) Sunday 6th June 2021 Memory came in two sizes, 16k and 64k. Our School computer lab was full of these but only 2 had 64k in 1985/86 then replaced with IBM xt clones author date text Carlos Camacho (United States) Thursday 1st April 2021 @Rusty, I would be interested in those cards. Do you still have the schematics? author date text Rusty (Australia) Thursday 26th May 2016 I designed a number of add-on cards for this computer in my teenage years - two floppy disk controllers, hard disk interface with networking, multifunction card with rtc, two ay-3-8910 psg chips and a spo256 speech chip along with two atari joystick ports and a z80 card to run cp/m. I still have those boards but not the computer. It was a very well made piece of hardware and very reliable - too expensive for me to buy at the time. 2 url date https://web.archive.org/web/20230413210407/http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=2 2023-04-13

This japanese computer seems quite powerful. The main board is located into the main case, under the monitor.

Inside this main case there are 6 expansion slots which is quite enough ! Thus a lot of expansion boards were available (disk, printers, 8088, Z80 boards, etc).

An interesting feature is that there's a little trap-door on the keyboard which reveals some cool control switches : a power switch, a text mode switch (80 / 40 columns), a reset button and volume control knob. Quite useful !