The is a Japanese

personal computer A personal computer (PC) is a multi-purpose microcomputer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use. Personal computers are intended to be operated directly by an end user, rather than by a computer expert or tec ...

, built by Fujitsu from February 1989 to the summer of 1997. It started as a proprietary PC variant intended for

multimedia Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms such as text, audio, images, animations, or video into a single interactive presentation, in contrast to tradit ...

applications and

PC games A personal computer game, also known as a PC game or computer game, is a type of video game played on a personal computer (PC) rather than a video game console or arcade machine. Its defining characteristics include: more diverse and user-dete ...

, but later became more compatible with IBM PC compatibles. In 1993, the

FM Towns Marty The FM Towns Marty is a fifth-generation home video game console released in 1993 by Fujitsu, exclusively for the Japanese market. It is often claimed to be the first 32-bit CD-based home video game system, although it has a 16-bit data bus, just ...

was released, a game console compatible with existing FM Towns games. The "FM" part of the name means "Fujitsu Micro" like their earlier products, while the "Towns" part is derived from the code name the system was assigned while in development, "Townes". This refers to Charles Townes, one of the winners of the 1964

Nobel Prize in Physics ) , image = Nobel Prize.png , alt = A golden medallion with an embossed image of a bearded man facing left in profile. To the left of the man is the text "ALFR•" then "NOBEL", and on the right, the text (smaller) "NAT•" then " ...

, following a custom of Fujitsu at the time to code name PC products after

Nobel Prize The Nobel Prizes ( ; sv, Nobelpriset ; no, Nobelprisen ) are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." Alfr ...

winners. The e in "Townes" was dropped when the system went into production to make it clearer that the term was to be pronounced like the word "towns" rather than the potential "tow-nes".

History

Fujitsu decided to release a new home computer after the

FM-7 The FM-7 ("Fujitsu Micro 7") is a home computer created by Fujitsu. It was first released in 1982 and was sold in Japan and Spain. It is a stripped-down version of Fujitsu's earlier FM-8 computer, and during development it was referred to as th ...

was technologically overcome by

NEC is a Japanese multinational information technology and electronics corporation, headquartered in Minato, Tokyo. The company was known as the Nippon Electric Company, Limited, before rebranding in 1983 as NEC. It provides IT and network soluti ...

PC-8801 The , commonly shortened to PC-88, are a brand of Zilog Z80-based 8-bit home computers released by Nippon Electric Company (NEC) in 1981 and primarily sold in Japan. The PC-8800 series sold extremely well and became one of the three major Japa ...

. During the life of the FM-7, Fujitsu learnt that software sales drove hardware sales, and in order to acquire usable software quickly, the new computer was to be based on Fujitsu's "FMR50" system architecture. The FMR50 system, released at 1986, was another x86/DOS-based computer similar to NEC's popular

PC-9801 The , commonly shortened to PC-98 or , is a lineup of Japanese 16-bit and 32-bit personal computers manufactured by NEC from 1982 to 2000. The platform established NEC's dominance in the Japanese personal computer market, and, by 1999, more th ...

. The FMR50 computers were sold with moderate success in Japanese offices, particularly in Japanese government offices. There were hundreds of software packages available for the FMR, including

Lotus 1-2-3 Lotus 1-2-3 is a discontinued spreadsheet program from Lotus Software (later part of IBM). It was the first killer application of the IBM PC, was hugely popular in the 1980s, and significantly contributed to the success of IBM PC-compatibles i ...

WordStar WordStar is a word processor application for microcomputers. It was published by MicroPro International and originally written for the CP/M-80 operating system, and later written also for MS-DOS and other 16-bit PC OSes. Rob Barnaby was the so ...

Multiplan Multiplan is spreadsheet program developed by Microsoft and introduced in 1982 as a competitor to VisiCalc. Multiplan was released first for computers running CP/M; it was developed using a Microsoft proprietary p-code C compiler as part of ...

, and dBASE III. With this basis of compatibility, the more multimedia-friendly FM Towns was created. NEC's PC-9801 computers were widespread and dominated in the 1980s, at one point reaching 70% of the 16/32-bit computer market. However, the early models had limited graphics (640×400 with 16 of 4096 colors) and sounds (4-operator/3 voice monaural FM sounds + 3 channel SSG sounds). Just as

Commodore Commodore may refer to: Ranks * Commodore (rank), a naval rank ** Commodore (Royal Navy), in the United Kingdom ** Commodore (United States) ** Commodore (Canada) ** Commodore (Finland) ** Commodore (Germany) or ''Kommodore'' * Air commodore ...

saw an opening for the Amiga in some global markets against the IBM PC, a computer with improved graphics and sound was considered to overcome the PC-9801 in the home-use field in Japan. With many multimedia innovations for its time, the FM Towns was that system, though for a number of reasons it never broke far beyond the boundaries of its niche market status. Eventually the FM Towns lost much of its uniqueness by adding a

DOS/V DOS/V is a Japanese computing initiative starting in 1990 to allow DOS on IBM PC compatibles with VGA cards to handle double-byte (DBCS) Japanese text via software alone. It was initially developed from PC DOS by IBM for its PS/55 machines (a ...

(PC clone plus DOS with native Japanese language support) compatibility mode switch, until Fujitsu finally discontinued making FM Towns specific hardware and software and moved to focus on the IBM PC clones (Fujitsu FMV) that many Japanese manufacturers—who previously were not players in the PC market—were building by the mid to late 1990s. To this day, Fujitsu is known for its laptop PCs globally, and FM Towns (and Marty) users have been relegated to a small community of aficionados.

Overview

Several variants were built; the first system (FM TOWNS model1 and model2) is based on an

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...

80386DX processor running at a clock speed of 16

MHz The hertz (symbol: Hz) is the unit of frequency in the International System of Units (SI), equivalent to one event (or cycle) per second. The hertz is an SI derived unit whose expression in terms of SI base units is s−1, meaning that one he ...

, with the option of adding an 80387 FPU, features one or two megabytes of

RAM Ram, ram, or RAM may refer to: Animals * A male sheep * Ram cichlid, a freshwater tropical fish People * Ram (given name) * Ram (surname) * Ram (director) (Ramsubramaniam), an Indian Tamil film director * RAM (musician) (born 1974), Dutch * ...

(with a possible maximum of 6 MB), one or two 3.5" floppy disk drives, a PCMCIA memory card slot and a single-speed CD-ROM drive. Its package includes a

gamepad A gamepad is a type of video game controller held in two hands, where the fingers (especially thumbs) are used to provide input. They are typically the main input device for video game consoles. Features Gamepads generally feature a set o ...

, a mouse and a

microphone A microphone, colloquially called a mic or mike (), is a transducer that converts sound into an electrical signal. Microphones are used in many applications such as telephones, hearing aids, public address systems for concert halls and publ ...

. The earlier, more distinctive models featuring a vertical CD-ROM tray on the front of the case (model1, model2, 1F, 2F, 1H, 2H, 10F and 20F) were often referred to as the "Gray" Towns, and were the ones most directly associated with the "FM Towns" brand. Most featured 3 memory expansion slots and used 72-pin non-parity SIMMs with a required timing of 100ns or less and a recommended timing of 60ns. Hard drives are not standard equipment, and are not required for most uses. The OS is loaded from CD-ROM by default. A SCSI Centronics 50/SCSI-1/Full-Pitch port is provided for connecting external SCSI disk drives, and is the most common way to connect a hard drive to an FM Towns PC. Although internal drives are rare, there is a hidden compartment with a SCSI 50-pin connector where a hard drive may be connected, however the power supply module does not typically provide the required Molex connector to power the drive. The video output is 15 kHz RGB (though some programs used a 31 kHz mode) using the same DB15 connector and pinouts as the PC-9801.

Operating system

The

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also i ...

used is

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ser ...

3.0/3.1/95 and a graphical OS called Towns OS, based on

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few ope ...

and the

Phar Lap Phar Lap (4 October 1926 – 5 April 1932) was a champion New Zealand–bred Thoroughbred racehorse who is widely regarded as New Zealand's greatest racehorse ever. Achieving incredible success during his distinguished career, his initial u ...

DOS extender A DOS extender is a computer software program running under DOS that enables software to run in a protected mode environment even though the host operating system is only capable of operating in real mode. DOS extenders were initially develope ...

(RUN386.EXE). Most games for the system were written in protected mode

Assembly Assembly may refer to: Organisations and meetings * Deliberative assembly, a gathering of members who use parliamentary procedure for making decisions * General assembly, an official meeting of the members of an organization or of their representa ...

and C using the Phar Lap DOS extender. These games usually utilize the Towns OS API (

TBIOS The is a Japanese personal computer, built by Fujitsu from February 1989 to the summer of 1997. It started as a proprietary PC variant intended for multimedia applications and PC games, but later became more compatible with IBM PC compatibles. ...

) for handling several graphic modes, sprites, sounds, a mouse, gamepads, and CD-audio. The FM Towns is capable of booting its graphical Towns OS straight from CD in 1989 - two years before

Amiga CDTV The CDTV (from Commodore Dynamic Total Vision, later treated as a backronym for Compact Disc Television) is a home multimedia entertainment and video game console – convertible into a full-fledged personal computer by the addition of optional ...

booted its GUI-based

AmigaOS 1.3 AmigaOS is a family of proprietary native operating systems of the Amiga and AmigaOne personal computers. It was developed first by Commodore International and introduced with the launch of the first Amiga, the Amiga 1000, in 1985. Early version ...

from internal CD drive and the CD-bootable

System 7 System 7, codenamed "Big Bang", and also known as Mac OS 7, is a graphical user interface-based operating system for Macintosh computers and is part of the classic Mac OS series of operating systems. It was introduced on May 13, 1991, by Apple C ...

was released for the

Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and software en ...

in 1991, and five years before the

El Torito El Torito (Spanish for "the little bull") is an American chain that serves Mexican food. El Torito operates 69 restaurants primarily in California.CD-ROM, the FM TOWNS has a "hidden C:"

ROM Rom, or ROM may refer to: Biomechanics and medicine * Risk of mortality, a medical classification to estimate the likelihood of death for a patient * Rupture of membranes, a term used during pregnancy to describe a rupture of the amniotic sac * ...

drive in which a minimum

system, CD-ROM driver and MSCDEX.EXE are installed. This minimal

DOS DOS is shorthand for the MS-DOS and IBM PC DOS family of operating systems. DOS may also refer to: Computing * Data over signalling (DoS), multiplexing data onto a signalling channel * Denial-of-service attack (DoS), an attack on a communicat ...

system runs first, and the DOS system reads and executes the Towns OS

IPL The Indian Premier League (IPL), also known as TATA IPL for sponsorship reasons, is a men's T20 franchise cricket league of India. It is annually contested by ten teams based out of seven Indian cities and three Indian states. The leagu ...

stored in CD-ROM after that. The Towns OS CD-ROM has an IPL, MS-DOS system (IO.SYS), DOS extender, and Towns

API An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how ...

(TBIOS). A minimal DOS system that allows the CD-ROM drive to be accessed is contained in a system

; this, coupled with Fujitsu's decision to charge only a minimal license fee for the inclusion of a bare-bones Towns OS on game CD-ROMs, allows game developers to make games bootable directly from CD-ROM without the need for a boot floppy or hard disk. Various

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...

and

BSD The Berkeley Software Distribution or Berkeley Standard Distribution (BSD) is a discontinued operating system based on Research Unix, developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berk ...

distributions have also been ported to the FM Towns system, including Debian and Gentoo. A version of

GNU GNU () is an extensive collection of free software (383 packages as of January 2022), which can be used as an operating system or can be used in parts with other operating systems. The use of the completed GNU tools led to the family of operat ...

called GNU for FM Towns was released in 1990.

Graphics

The FM Towns features a custom Fujitsu graphics chip, enabling video modes ranging from 320×200 to 720×512 resolutions, with 16 to 32,768 simultaneous colors out of a possible 4096 to 16 million (depending on the video mode); most of these video modes have two

memory Memory is the faculty of the mind by which data or information is encoded, stored, and retrieved when needed. It is the retention of information over time for the purpose of influencing future action. If past events could not be remembered ...

pages Page most commonly refers to: * Page (paper), one side of a leaf of paper, as in a book Page, PAGE, pages, or paging may also refer to: Roles * Page (assistance occupation), a professional occupation * Page (servant), traditionally a young mal ...

, and it allows the use of up to 1024 sprites of 16×16 pixels each. It also has a built-in font

for the display of

kanji are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese ...

characters. The system has the ability to overlay different video modes; for example, the 320×200 video mode with 32,768 colors can be overlaid with a 640×480 mode using 16 colors, which allows games to combine high-color graphics with high-resolution kanji text. It uses 640 KB of

video RAM Dual-ported video RAM, or VRAM, is a dual-ported variant of dynamic RAM (DRAM), which was once commonly used to store the framebuffer in graphics adapters. Note that most computers and game consoles do not use this form of memory, and dual-porte ...

, including 512 KB

VRAM Video random access memory (VRAM) is dedicated computer memory used to store the pixels and other graphics data as a framebuffer to be rendered on a computer monitor. This is often different technology than other computer memory, to facilitate b ...

and 128 KB sprite RAM. Sprite layer: *

Resolution Resolution(s) may refer to: Common meanings * Resolution (debate), the statement which is debated in policy debate * Resolution (law), a written motion adopted by a deliberative body * New Year's resolution, a commitment that an individual mak ...

: 256×240

pixel In digital imaging, a pixel (abbreviated px), pel, or picture element is the smallest addressable element in a raster image, or the smallest point in an all points addressable display device. In most digital display devices, pixels are the ...

s *

Colors Color (American English) or colour (British English) is the visual perceptual property deriving from the spectrum of light interacting with the photoreceptor cells of the eyes. Color categories and physical specifications of color are associa ...

256 Year 256 ( CCLVI) was a leap year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Claudius and Glabrio (or, less frequently, year 1009 ''Ab urbe condi ...

on screen out of 32,768 palette * Sprite RAM: 128 KB (8 KB attributes, 120 KB pattern/colour data) * Maximum sprite count: Up to 1024 on screen * Sprite size: 16×16 pixels * Colors per sprite: 16FM Towns video hardware - MAME source
/ref> * Overlay support: Bitmap modes 1-11 Up to two graphical layers can be overlaid, whether it is two bitmap layers, or the sprite layer with a bitmap background layer. The latter is useful for action games, though the sprite function is not as advanced as that of rival 32-bit computer, the

Sharp X68000 The is a home computer created by Sharp Corporation. It was first released in 1987 and sold only in Japan. The initial model has a 10 MHz Motorola 68000 CPU, 1 MB of RAM, and lacks a hard drive. The final model was released in 1993 wit ...

. When the sprite layer is used, it is rendered to VRAM layer 1 on top, with the bitmap background as VRAM layer 0 below. When two bitmap layers are used, then both are rendered to VRAM layers 0 and 1.

CPU

The following is a list of models and the CPUs they contain from the factory. * 80386SX (16 MHz) : UX, Marty, Marty II, Car Marty * 80386SX (20 MHz) : UG * 80386DX (16 MHz) : CX * 80386DX (20 MHz) : HG * 80486SX (20 MHz) : HR, UR * 80486SX (25 MHz) : ME * 80486SX (33 MHz) : MA, MF, Fresh, FreshTV, Fresh-T, EA * 80486DX2 (66 MHz) : MX, Fresh-E, Fresh-ES, Fresh-ET, HA * 486DX4 (100 MHz) : Fresh-FS, Fresh-FT * Pentium (Socket4/60 MHz) : HB * Pentium (Socket5/90 MHz) : HC FMV Towns * Pentium (Socket5/90 MHz) : Fresh GT, Fresh GS * Pentium (Socket5/120 MHz) : Model H

Sound

The FM Towns system is able to play regular

audio CD Compact Disc Digital Audio (CDDA or CD-DA), also known as Digital Audio Compact Disc or simply as Audio CD, is the standard format for audio compact discs. The standard is defined in the ''Red Book'', one of a series of Rainbow Books (named ...

s, and also supports the use of 8 PCM voices and 6 FM channels, using the Ricoh RF5c68 and

Yamaha YM2612 The YM2612, a.k.a. OPN2, is a sound chip developed by Yamaha. It is a member of Yamaha's OPN family of FM synthesis chips, and is derived from the YM2203. The YM2612 is a six-channel FM synthesizer. It was used in several game and computer syst ...

sound chips, respectively. The system has ports in the front to accommodate

karaoke Karaoke (; ; , clipped compound of Japanese ''kara'' "empty" and ''ōkesutora'' "orchestra") is a type of interactive entertainment usually offered in clubs and bars, where people sing along to recorded music using a microphone. The music is ...

, LEDs to indicate volume level, and software to add popular voice-altering effects such as echoes. Games on the FM Towns regularly use Red Book Audio CD music tracks, especially if they are designed specifically for the Fujitsu system. Games ported from the PC-9801, for instance, might have used only PCM/FM music. This was a novelty and innovation far ahead of other PCs of the time made possible by the standard CD-ROM drive found in every FM Towns computer.

Ricoh RF5c68

The Ricoh RF5c68 is an eight-channel

sound chip A sound chip is an integrated circuit (chip) designed to produce audio signals through digital, analog or mixed-mode electronics. Sound chips are typically fabricated on metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) mixed-signal chips that process ...

developed by

Ricoh is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational imaging and electronics company (law), company. It was founded by the now-defunct commercial division of the Riken, Institute of Physical and Chemical Research (Riken) known as the ''Riken ...

. It is notably used in Fujitsu's FM Towns computer series, along with Sega's System 18 and System 32

arcade game An arcade game or coin-op game is a coin-operated entertainment machine typically installed in public businesses such as restaurants, bars and amusement arcades. Most arcade games are presented as primarily games of skill and include arcade v ...

system boards. The RF5c68 supports eight 8-bit PCM channels, with 19.6

kHz The hertz (symbol: Hz) is the unit of frequency in the International System of Units (SI), equivalent to one event (or cycle) per second. The hertz is an SI derived unit whose expression in terms of SI base units is s−1, meaning that on ...

or variable

sampling rate In signal processing, sampling is the reduction of a continuous-time signal to a discrete-time signal. A common example is the conversion of a sound wave to a sequence of "samples". A sample is a value of the signal at a point in time and/or spac ...

. Audio bit depth ranges from

8-bit In computer architecture, 8-bit Integer (computer science), integers or other Data (computing), data units are those that are 8 bits wide (1 octet (computing), octet). Also, 8-bit central processing unit (CPU) and arithmetic logic unit (ALU) arc ...

10-bit In computing, a word is the natural unit of data used by a particular Central processing unit, processor design. A word is a fixed-sized Data (computing), datum handled as a unit by the instruction set or the hardware of the processor. The number ...

.Ricoh RF5C68 PCM controller - MAME source
/ref>

References

External links

FM Towns entry
at Old-Computers.com
The world of FM Towns

UNZ (うんづ) - An FM Towns emulator

FM Towns/Bochs
– An FM Towns emulator based on

Bochs Bochs (pronounced "box") is a portable IA-32 and x86-64 IBM PC compatible emulator and debugger mostly written in C++ and distributed as free software under the GNU Lesser General Public License. It supports emulation of the processor(s) (includin ...

The Collectible Ultima
site referencing the Ultima VI for FM Towns.

(Japanese)
How to create and format an HD image and installing MS-DOS with full CD support in it using the Unz emulator

FM Towns entry
at GameEx.com {{DEFAULTSORT:Fm Towns Home video game consoles 8086-based home computers Computer-related introductions in 1989 Products introduced in 1989