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

[rprosperi]

(02-18-2022 09:39 PM)Akuji Wrote:  There is IQ-780S card that looks similar to EPROM card by the looks of its back ('bump'). DO you know the reason that forced Sharp to produce it instead of the regular format?

The bump was simply to accommodate chips the were not flush on the board, which typically meant EPROM chips, but obviously that is not the case here for a simple RAM card. 32K RAM cards were the only RAM cards when the Wizard/IQ series launched and I believe most cards prior to these products used thicker cards, so I can only speculate that in early production, they had not yet switched to the thinner components and this early one simply was made using older, thicker chips, but I'm not certain.

(02-18-2022 09:39 PM)Akuji Wrote:  Does this mean that the Japanese and western organizers/cards may have matching numbers? The lists of organizers/cards' serial IDs I build are separate for Japan/western regions. Initially, I thought the numbering scheme was the same for all the products produced by Sharp and didn't think of comparing these lists.

Still, the cards on the second photo are both western, so something definitely went wrong with their serials (a typo?).

The serial numbers are unique for each specific model (OZ-7000, IQ-781, IQ-717, etc.) so there are feasibly many products with the same exact serial numbers, it would only mean they were made on (about) the same date. You really need both the model # and s/n to uniquely identify a particular item.

(02-18-2022 09:39 PM)Akuji Wrote:  Also, maybe you can shed light on another question I still haven't found an answer to. Most IC cards have a letter (usually, it's U, but there are also A and J) instead of a number in a second digit (i.e., 1U007367 or 2J001111). What's the meaning of this letter?

I used to know this but I can no longer recall, though I instinctively recall that it specifies the factory where it was produced; I also seem to recall the letter used is just a code, it is not a simple abbreviation; in other words items with a "U" are not necessarily made in a place that begins with "U".