Tiki-100 was a desktop
home
A home, or domicile, is a space used as a permanent or semi-permanent residence for one or many humans, and sometimes various companion animals. It is a fully or semi sheltered space and can have both interior and exterior aspects to it. H ...
/
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 ...
manufactured by
Tiki Data
Tiki Data was a manufacturer of microcomputers, located in Oslo, Norway. The company was founded in 1983 by Lars Monrad Krohn and Gro Jørgensen, and was targeting the then emerging computer market in the educational sector. Following the launch o ...
of
Oslo
Oslo ( , , or ; sma, Oslove) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population of ...
,
Norway
Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and t ...
. The computer was launched in the spring of 1984 under the original name Kontiki-100, and was first and foremost intended for the emerging educational sector, especially for primary schools. Early prototypes had 4 KB ROM, and the '100' in the machine's name was based on the total KB amount of memory.
Development
It was decided by the Norwegian government that Norwegian schools should all use the same standardized computer in education. The Tiki-100 was developed as a direct response to this decision, and was as such greatly influenced by the specifications laid out by the government.
One of the most influential of these specifications was compatibility with
CP/M
CP/M, originally standing for Control Program/Monitor and later Control Program for Microcomputers, is a mass-market operating system created in 1974 for Intel 8080/ 85-based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Inc. Initial ...
and the
Z80
The Z80 is an 8-bit microprocessor introduced by Zilog as the startup company's first product. The Z80 was conceived by Federico Faggin in late 1974 and developed by him and his 11 employees starting in early 1975. The first working samples were ...
CPU.
Being designed as a computer intended for education, interactivity was prioritized. The machine was given good audiovisual capabilities for its time. While other educational computers at the time had a main focus on
BASIC
BASIC (Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages designed for ease of use. The original version was created by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz at Dartmouth College ...
and simple computer-science, the Tiki-100 had more focus on being a tool to aid in education and everyday-life situations. This put forth the need and memory requirements to run more complex applications.
The first prototype was built using
wire-wrap
Wire wrap is an electronic component assembly technique that was invented to wire telephone crossbar switches, and later adapted to construct electronic circuit boards. Electronic components mounted on an insulating board are interconnected by ...
and a bigger prototype case. Soon followed a prototype made on PCB, and there were very little changes from this prototype to the final product. The most significant changes was the change from Siemens keyboard switches to cheaper Sasse switches, along with the re-arranging of the analog video output connection. Very few, if any, revision A or B Tiki-100 computers ever hit the store shelves.
Tiki-100 was released under the original name 'Kontiki-100' in the spring of 1984.
Thor Heyerdahl
Thor Heyerdahl KStJ (; 6 October 1914 – 18 April 2002) was a Norwegian adventurer and ethnographer with a background in zoology, botany and geography.
Heyerdahl is notable for his ''Kon-Tiki'' expedition in 1947, in which he sailed 8,000&nb ...
threatened to open a legal case on the use of the Kontiki name, with reference to the name of his
famous raft. The name was changed to "Tiki-100" as a result.
Around the same time,
Computerworld
''Computerworld'' (abbreviated as CW) is an ongoing decades old professional publication which in 2014 "went digital." Its audience is information technology (IT) and business technology professionals, and is available via a publication website ...
magazine claimed the operating system "KP/M" was a direct copy of
CP/M
CP/M, originally standing for Control Program/Monitor and later Control Program for Microcomputers, is a mass-market operating system created in 1974 for Intel 8080/ 85-based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Inc. Initial ...
, due to KP/M being able to run CP/M software. As a response to these claims, KP/M was renamed "Tiko" to avoid direct association to CP/M and
Digital Research
Digital Research, Inc. (DR or DRI) was a company created by Gary Kildall to market and develop his CP/M operating system and related 8-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit systems like MP/M, Concurrent DOS, FlexOS, Multiuser DOS, DOS Plus, DR DOS and ...
.
Specifications
Specifications for the basic Tiki-100 model:
*CPU:
Zilog Z80
The Z80 is an 8-bit microprocessor introduced by Zilog as the startup company's first product. The Z80 was conceived by Federico Faggin in late 1974 and developed by him and his 11 employees starting in early 1975. The first working samples wer ...
running at 4 MHz.
*Memory: 64 KB 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
* ...
(main memory), 32 KB of graphical memory and 8 KB of
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
* R ...
.
*keyboard: A n-key rollover
mechanical keyboard
The technology of computer keyboards includes many elements. Among the more important of these is the switch technology that they use. Computer alphanumeric keyboards typically have 80 to 110 durable switches, generally one for each key. The ch ...
integrated into the computer case
*Graphics:
PAL
Phase Alternating Line (PAL) is a colour encoding system for analogue television. It was one of three major analogue colour television standards, the others being NTSC and SECAM. In most countries it was broadcast at 625 lines, 50 fields (25 ...
-compatible, based on discrete
TTL
TTL may refer to:
Photography
* Through-the-lens metering, a camera feature
* Zenit TTL, an SLR film camera named for its TTL metering capability
Technology
* Time to live, a computer data lifespan-limiting mechanism
* Transistor–transistor lo ...
components.
Bitmap graphics
upright=1, The Smiley, smiley face in the top left corner is a raster image. When enlarged, individual pixels appear as squares. Enlarging further, each pixel can be analyzed, with their colors constructed through combination of the values for ...
with a 256-color
palette, supporting 3 different resolutions with 256x256x16 colours, 512x256x4 colours or 1024x256x2 simultaneous colours.
The has no text-mode as it used bitmapped graphics only. However, terminal emulators provided options of 40, 80 or 160 by 25 characters, each option using one of the three modes. All of the graphics modes have hardware vertical scroll.
*Audio: An
AY-3-8912
The AY-3-8910 is a 3-voice programmable sound generator (PSG) designed by General Instrument in 1978, initially for use with their 16-bit CP1610 or one of the PIC1650 series of 8-bit microcomputers. The AY-3-8910 and its variants were used i ...
polyphonic sound generator
*Storage: One or two integrated 5¼ inch
floppy disk
A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, or a diskette) is an obsolescent type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined w ...
drives
*Interfaces: Two
RS-232
In telecommunications, RS-232 or Recommended Standard 232 is a standard originally introduced in 1960 for serial communication transmission of data. It formally defines signals connecting between a ''DTE'' (''data terminal equipment'') such a ...
serial ports, One
Centronics
Centronics Data Computer Corporation was an American manufacturer of computer printers, now remembered primarily for the parallel interface that bears its name, the Centronics connector.
History
Foundations
Centronics began as a division o ...
printer port
Software included:
*TIKO, a
CP/M
CP/M, originally standing for Control Program/Monitor and later Control Program for Microcomputers, is a mass-market operating system created in 1974 for Intel 8080/ 85-based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Inc. Initial ...
2.2-compatible
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 in ...
*A version of the
BBC BASIC programming language
BBC BASIC is a version of the BASIC programming language released in 1981 as the native programming language for the BBC Micro home/personal computer, providing a standardized language for a UK computer literacy project of the BBC. It was wri ...
interpreter
*A
COMAL
COMAL (''Common Algorithmic Language'') is a computer programming language developed in Denmark by Børge R. Christensen and Benedict Løfstedt and originally released in 1975. COMAL was one of the few structured programming languages that was a ...
interpreter
Optional expansions:
* A harddisk controller, replacing one of the floppy disk stations with a 8MB
harddisk
A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magneti ...
.
* A bespoke network-hub that allowed up to 16 computers to connect in a network, sharing disks and printers. The server was a Tiki-100 with harddisk, running the
MP/M
MP/M (Multi-Programming Monitor Control Program) is a discontinued multi-user version of the CP/M operating system, created by Digital Research developer Tom Rolander in 1979. It allowed multiple users to connect to a single computer, each us ...
operating system, serving up to 3 different printers simultaneously.
8/16 upgrade
An 8/16 upgrade was possible, consisting of a secondary
CPU card
A CPU card is a printed circuit board (PCB) that contains the central processing unit (CPU) of a computer. CPU cards are specified by CPU clock frequency and bus type as well as other features and applications built into the card.
CPU cards inclu ...
with a 4 MHz
8088 processor.
With this upgrade the machine is capable of running TIKOS(a
CP/M-86
CP/M-86 was a version of the CP/M operating system that Digital Research (DR) made for the Intel 8086 and Intel 8088. The system commands are the same as in CP/M-80. Executable files used the relocatable .CMD file format. Digital Research als ...
clone) and
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 ...
2.11, with RAM being expanded up to 736 KB.
Although running MS-DOS, the expansion does not provide PC-compatibility. When programs are running on the 8088, the Z80 CPU is serving as an I/O processor, handling disk I/O, graphics etc.
Rev. D
Later, an
Intel 8088
The Intel 8088 ("''eighty-eighty-eight''", also called iAPX 88) microprocessor is a variant of the Intel 8086. Introduced on June 1, 1979, the 8088 has an eight-bit external data bus instead of the 16-bit bus of the 8086. The 16-bit registers an ...
based
IBM PC compatible
IBM PC compatible computers are similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT, all from computer giant IBM, that are able to use the same software and expansion cards. Such computers were referred to as PC clones, IBM clones or IBM PC clones. ...
model running
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 ...
was made, somewhat confusingly called Tiki-100 Rev. D. In addition to being PC-compatible (including
CGA-compatible graphics), it also contained a Z80 processor so that it could run the original ''Tiki 100'' software, although with a slightly reduced graphics specification due to the CGA. The two processors shared the same
bus
A bus (contracted from omnibus, with variants multibus, motorbus, autobus, etc.) is a road vehicle that carries significantly more passengers than an average car or van. It is most commonly used in public transport, but is also in use for cha ...
, and the Z80 programs still ran under the 8088 operating system.
Tiki-200
After the commercial failure of the Tiki-100 rev. D, it was succeeded by the Tiki-200. This was a standard IBM PC-clone, with imported hardware which did not make any attempt at maintaining backward-compatibility with the Tiki-100. Despite these attempts at adapting to the personal-computer market, due to steep competition Tiki-Data was unable to maintain a stable foothold in it and went into gradual decline. In 1996 the company along with its deficit was bought by Merkantildata.
References
External links
Tiki 100{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101121032820/http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=734 , date=2010-11-21
Detailsabout Tiki 100 including an emulator
Z80-based home computers
8086-based home computers
Norwegian brands
Computer-related introductions in 1984
1984 establishments in Norway
Goods manufactured in Norway