The Sord M5 was a Japanese home computer launched in 1982. It was also sold as the CGL M5 in the UK by Computer Games Limited. This entry refers to the original Japanese version.

The Company name is a shortening of the two words SOftware HaRDware, and they had already produced the moderately successful Sord M23 among others.

The processor was a Zilog Z80, running at 3.58 MHz. The M5 had 4K RAM, which was expandable to 32K, and 16K VRAM. The 8K ROM was expandable to 16K with a ROM cartridge. Video hardware consisted of 24x40 text (8x6 characters), 224 user defined characters, 256x192 graphics, 16 colours, 32 hardware sprites (up to 16x16 pixels). Sound hardware had three sound channels, one noise channel, six octaves, and 15 amplitude levels.

The M5 came with Basic-I on a cartridge, which was very similar to the standard Microsoft with a few differences in the keywords, and came with a number of additional commands which dealt with the manipulation of sprites. Basic-G (graphics) and BASIC-F (floating point arithmetic) were also available on cartridge.

It had a 55-key membrane keyboard, similar to the Sinclair Spectrum, but the keys had the bottom right corner chopped off them. There were two shift keys, and no space bar. There was a slot for the ROM cartridge, a built-in Centronics printer interface, and ports for the joypads that came with the computer, cassette, and TV.

The Sord M5 sold for £189.95.

Manufacturer: Sord
Date: 1982

This exhibit has a reference ID of CH47092. Please quote this reference ID in any communication with the Centre for Computing History.