Fujitsu FM Towns OS

thinkpadman

I thought this may be interesting for some of the members here.

In Japan during the 1990s, a PC system made by Fujitsu was called FM Towns. These were predominately released only in the Japanese market, so little is known about these elsewhere. Several models were released using Intel's 386 CPU originally, and eventually ended with the slower Pentium CPUs. Despite this, these weren't really a typical multimedia PC for its time. They included a gamepad by default, plus were suitable as a karaoke machine. A hard disk was also not included, the OS would boot from CD. There's more info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FM_Towns

To get it running I used a Japanese emulator called うんづ (UNZ in English) with the appropriate ROM. The emulator can emulate either a 386DX or 486SX CPU with up to 96MB RAM. Sound worked without a hitch too. The OS was loaded from a CUE image file via Daemon Tools.

The following screenshots I created showing one of the later versions of Town OS, before Fujitsu decided to scrap it and focus on Windows-based PCs. As it was only a Japanese release, there's no English version to show, but thankfully I know enough Japanese to get by using it. The apps below came included with the OS.

Towns OS desktop upon boot:

https://goput.it/v/cie.jpg


https://goput.it/v/i13.jpg

Font editor:

https://goput.it/v/udo.jpg

Icon editor:

https://goput.it/v/rtn.jpg

Some sort of game, reminds me of The Incredible Machine:

https://goput.it/v/olk.jpg

Music World, MIDI based application where you can change the instrument based on geographic location:

https://goput.it/v/ryp.jpg

Some sort of quiz game, asks you multiple choice questions around anime, TV shows, geography, etc. with lots of elephants:

https://goput.it/v/mwe.jpg

The game in action, asking me to pick a pro baseball player as an answer:

https://goput.it/v/f40.jpg

Another MIDI based music application:

https://goput.it/v/sik.jpg

CD player, those tracks are from the image file. The circle graphic animates to mimic a CD spinning in the same way as it's physically played (The CD drive wasn't your standard PC one with horizontal tray). Track 1 states it's data (the OS itself), so it cannot play that track.

https://goput.it/v/g6e.jpg

Dictionary application also exists - Japanese to Japanese dictionary showing the meaning of ice:

https://goput.it/v/5vs.jpg

Same app but showing the English to Japanese translation of ice:

https://goput.it/v/5u2.jpg

Edit: Noticed image links aren't working for me, so added URLs alongside it for viewing.

Kirk

Hey, when embedding images from GoPut.IT, don't copy the /v/ part of the URL. If you didn't notice from your links, that's an HTML page with image details, not the actual image. That is why your embedding failed.

FYI

Doqtor Kirby

Likewise, there's also a home console by Fujitsu called the FM Towns Marty. It was pretty close to the FM Towns in terms of compatibility, and even played games designed for the FM Towns.

Although it was the most annoying piece of shit ever on startup.

calvinb

UI wise, it looks like bits of OS/2, the Atari ST, and Amiga Workbench sprinkled about

SomeGuy

Interesting, I had heard about the FM Towns, but I didn't know they had their own OS and UI. It would be kind of hard to kick around though, with half of the UI in Japanese.