RC-1000 Wrist Terminal

Summary

The Japanese Seiko Holdings K.K., or Seiko for short, was created in 1881 from a watch repair business. In 1973 Seiko launched the first digital clocks, and when the first home computers appeared in the 1980s, Seiko began to develop watches with memory and calculation capabilities.

The RC-1000 appears in 1984 and offers 2051 bytes memory for notes, phone numbers and alarm settings. 12 characters on two lines serve the display. The data comes from a computer to the clock via the RS232 interface; the software is available for Apple II, Commodore 64, IBM PC, NEC 8201, TRS-80, Tandy Color Computer, among others. The adapter cable is included with every watch, just like the Data Transmission Software. Data can only be written to the memory of the clock, a readout is not possible. Data is always written completely, an update of individual storage areas is not possible.

The successor to the RC-1000 is the RC-20 from 1985. The Z80-compatible 8-bit processor SMC84C00 has 2 KiB RAM and is freely programmable. The display is on an LCD display with 42 × 32 pixels. Buttons are not necessary, because the display is sensitive to touch.