website/content/museum/sage-computer-technology-sage-ii.md

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

title	categories	types	origins	years	cpus	params
Sage Computer Technology Sage II	Computers	Professional Computer	U.S.A.	1982	Motorola MC-68000	name image company company_name specs tabs adverts links comments related oc_id source Sage II /media/museum/photos/sage_ii_system_1.jpg /companies/sage-computer-technology Sage Computer Technology label value NAME Sage II label value MANUFACTURER Sage Computer Technology label value TYPE Professional Computer label value ORIGIN U.S.A. label value YEAR 1982 label value BUILT IN LANGUAGE None label value KEYBOARD Serial video terminal label value CPU Motorola MC-68000 label value SPEED 8 Mhz. label value RAM 128 KB expandable to 512 KB label value ROM unknown label value TEXT MODES 80 columns x 25 lines label value GRAPHIC MODES none label value COLORS none label value SIZE / WEIGHT unknown label value I/O PORTS 1 x Serial - 1 x GPIB label value BUILT IN MEDIA 1 or 2 x 5.25'' 800 KB F.D. drives label value OS USCD P-System - CP/M 68K label value POWER SUPPLY Buit-in power supply unit label value PRICE $3,600 (1 disk drive and 128 KB RAM version) adverts links title subtitle text image U.S. ADVERT advert said: No waiting for software ...This exciting micro has fired the imagination of programmers who are busy developping new software to take full advantage of its performance capabilities... No wait state ...One advantage is the total elimination of memory access wait states so that interaction between the processor, RAM and disk drive is speeded up... A free p-System for those who don't wait ...A free p-System operating system and PASCAL, FORTRAN 77 and BASIC compilers which alone lists for $1475, we're now including free with the Sage II... /media/museum/pubs/sage_ii_pub_1.jpg title subtitle text image UK ADVERT, OCT 1983 Advertisement from a UK Sage dealer. /media/museum/pubs/sage_ii_pub_s2.jpg title url text Marcus Wigan's Homepage http://go.to/mwigan Marcus has some info about the Sage systems title url text sageandstride.org http://www.sageandstride.org/index.html Excellent site about systems produced by SAGE Computer/Stride Micro/MicroSage author date text Doctor Smith says: Cackling Cacophony! Friday 3rd February 2017 Doctor Smith says: Cackling Cacophony! Very fast over priced junk. I prefer Apple II anyday over this Bubble-headed Booby. author date text Pete Fenelon (York, UK) Friday 13rd January 2006 I had one of these for a while. Nice machine, and astonishingly quick given its vintage. Distinctive feature - the CPU activity LED changed colour depending on whether the CPU was in user or system mode! /museum/sage-computer-technology-sage-iv 607 url date https://web.archive.org/web/20230530103345/http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=607 2023-05-30

Sage Technology designed the Sage II around one of the fastest and most powerful chip available at the time, the Motorola MC68000, which was designed, among other things, for the implementation of high-level languages.

The Sage II, didn't look awesome. It was physically smaller than an Apple II, but packed a true 16 bits CPU and 512 KB of RAM. Only 128 KB were left free for the user, the remaining 384 KB being used as a RAM disc.

The Sage II used the UCSD P-System operating system. P-System means P-Code, an early universal intermediate code concept for programming languages, the same idea that Java is now based upon. Sage had even modified the P-System so that the system was truly multi-user. A special version of CP/M called CP/M 68K could also run on the Sage II.

One or two Mitsubishi 5.25 inch floppy drives were used to store programs and data. Each one could store up to 800 Kb per disk in the native Sage format. They were fully software configurable and had preset formats for IBM, Xerox, Rainbow and other systems. The only problem is that the Sage II didn't provide any hard disk management. This is will only be possible with the Sage IV model (10 to 40 MB hard disks).