Casio PB-1000 unearthed from the vault

Today I was throwing old stuff away from my parents-in-law’s house, when I came across a Casio PB-1000 personal computer, which belonged to my wife. She told me ‘oh, that’s just a calculator I used at school, it used to be good for trig’. In fact, it is a very capable machine (in its time, now your TV’s remote has more processing power than this thing!), it has 8kB of RAM, an RS-232 and floppy drive port, graphic touch screen, and runs for 55 to 100 hours on 3 AA batteries. What really strikes me opening the device is that the keyboard is very similar to the ZX81’s, with all the most used BASIC commands overlaid on each key, and accessible using the shift key. Here is a picture of this ancient device, which brings back many fond memories, such as getting Pong to work.