Sharp electronic organizers with the IC card slot (Wizard OZ/IQ/PA/PI series)

[Akuji]

(03-29-2021 09:20 PM)rprosperi Wrote:  The OZ/IQ-775 and -776 were not BASIC cards, these were blank EPROM/RAM cards for VARs/Integrators/Corporate customers to deploy custom applications developed in C using an SDK obtained from each Sharp subsidiary.

SEC (Sharp Electronics Corp - the US Sales subsidiary) did not carry the OZ-870, as it made more sense to only carry the larger card; we had constant complaints that the 64K RAM in the earlier cards was not enough.

You are totally right regarding the 775/776 cards, my bad. I also forgot to mention the IQ-771 Basic card with 32 Kb of RAM, which, I suppose, was not available in the US due to the 'low memory' reason as well.

(03-29-2021 09:20 PM)rprosperi Wrote:  I recall the CE-901 and -902 but IIRC, these were simple RAM cards (for storing organizer data) that were introduced for the 9000 series (9500/9520/9600) Wizard models.

Actually, these are genuine Basic cards designed for the 9000 (and 8900 in Europe) series of organizers. CE-902 is available on Ralf Beckmann's website and the picture of CE-901 below was taken from the discussion on the French forum.

(03-29-2021 09:20 PM)rprosperi Wrote:  I have no details on the 'Fast BasIQ' product. At the time, I heard about this (from a customer!) but could get no details. Sharp essentially had each subsidiary focus on it's own market, with only local partners and vendors. This (lack of) 'vision' seems naive and silly today, but in the pre-internet days, it was industry standard behavior and other than Canada and Australia (and Mexico to a lesser extent) we collaborated very little with vendors in other countries.

It is interesting to hear regarding the collaboration between the US & Canada subsidiaries, considering that the Canadian unit decided to adopt European 'IQ' branding.
On a side note, even though Canadian and European organizers' and cards' branding was unified, their packaging localization was still different (mainly by stripping down the number of text descriptions to English and French). I have only one Canadian card in my collection; here it is (bottom) together with its European counterpart (top).



One of the things I'm curious about is the release of Japanese IC cards in the west, mainly the games. It's known that Sharp published six game cards in the west, four of which (717, 719, 721, and 8A01) were 'westernized' versions of the Japanese cards, while the remaining two were western-only releases.
More than 30 game cards were released for Sharp organizers in Japan, and some have either partial or even complete English localization. Out of the cards below, 3C27, 3C31, and 3C36 are fully in English. BTW, the first three cards are the 'source' for the 'westernized' 717, 719, and 721.
Bob, do you remember who was the initiator of releasing Japanese game cards in the west (either Japanese publisher of a particular game, Sharp Japan, Sharp US/Europe)? How was the 'westernization' process established, and which factors negatively impacted the expansion of this initiative?