I would have like to been in the meeting where they discussed putting the keyboard cable on the front of the keyboard.
Is it possible they designed the board most of the way before they realised?
That actually makes a lot of sense. Board revision was a lot more difficult back then.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
After all, the usually obsessive documentation over at Sega Retro includes only the barest stub of an information page for the quixotic, education-focused 1986 hardware.
The site's recently posted deep dive on the Sega AI Computer includes an incredible amount of well-documented information on this historical oddity, including ROMs for dozens of previously unpreserved pieces of software that can now be partially run on MAME.
Despite the Japan-only release, the Sega AI Computer's casing includes an English-language message stressing its support for the AI-focused Prolog language and a promise that it will "bring you into the world of artificial intelligence."
Indeed, a 1986 article in Electronics magazine (preserved by SMS Power) describes what sounds like a kind of simple and wholesome early progenitor of today's world of generative AI creations:
Still, it's notable how much effort the community has put in to fill a formerly black hole in our understanding of this corner of Sega history.
SMS Power's write-up of its findings is well worth a full look, as is the site's massive Google Drive, which is filled with documentation, screenshots, photos, contemporaneous articles and ads, and much more.
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