Sharp IQ-7000 Electronic Organizer

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For the middle of the 1980s Sharp had the knowledge to develop a powerful electronic diary with enough RAM capacity can be used by everyone not only to store phone numbers, addresses and notes, but synchronize data to a personal computer, print on a pocket printer or expand it with a dozens of software available on a credit-card sized expansion card (IC card). The first prototype was finished in 1986, but it didn't support input or display japanese kanji characters, so Sharp decided to revise it. The new PA-7000 was introduced in January 1987 in Japan, and became a big success. Although it didn't contain a real-time clock, but it can hold all types of data as a diary made of paper can: calendar, schedule, note, and in addition to these, contatined a basic four-function calculator too. Because of the japanese writing system, it supported four input modes: in addition to usual english alphabet, and katakana, hiragana symbols, it can transform these to kanji characters based on the built-in kanji dictionary. The thin foil-style PCB keyboard defined the style of these electronic organizers for years, but the export variations had a more robust plastic one. The first in this series was the IQ-7000 Electronic Organizer in 1988, which was named as Wizard in the USA, and got a more stylish model number, OZ-7000. Due to the success similar to the japanese original model, soon more variations were introduced, e.g. multilingual versions, with QWERTY-style keyboard layout, or with more and more memory. The software available for the PA-series was boosted by the built-in CPU which was used in a wide range of pocket computers.