Greetings,
Up until recently, I've always thought that many digital artists of the early 90s simply used a mouse for drawing illustrations (such as those found on BBSes). Apparently, that's not entirely true. In fact, it's become apparent to me that graphics tablets (such as those made by Wacom) were becoming increasingly accessible to consumers starting around 1991-1992, which overlaps with X68000's heyday.
According to the Japanese Wikipedia article for Wacom (https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%AF%E3%82%B3%E3%83%A0), there is at least one confirmed series of Wacom graphics tablet that was compatible with X68000, the SD series. Soon after, it mentions the UD series, which isn't explicitly stated to work with the X68K, though I'm fairly certain it does, owing to the fact that it was released during the same period, and also thanks to this cute illustration that clearly shows a Wacom UD in front of a X68K. (https://tomseditor.com/gallery/i/51199/drawing)
It got me to wondering, how many other graphics tablets are compatible with the X68K?
- Does anyone have any information about this?
- Has anyone here tested any peripherals like this?
- Does anyone here own an X68K-compatible tablet?
- If I were to buy a Wacom SD or UD, would any tablet I find work, or were there X68K-specific versions of those tablets sold in stores?
Any information anyone can provide is greatly appreciated. Perhaps we can demystify the situation with graphics tablets on the X68000 together!
I have a driver for the FMT-TB111 for the FM-Towns computer. Looks like it plugs into the joystick port. It uses the same base driver, TMS or TwinMouse, that the PC98 mouse driver does. Also supports CyberStick as a mouse and maybe others.
I can't really tell but the UD probably just plugs into the serial port somehow or another. I suspect it needs a driver. It's not totally impossible it plugs in to the mouse port but I'd need more information. Mind the mouse port is also just a serial port, its nothing fancy iirc but the OS driver expects a certain format of data to be there.
Similar, maybe there is a joyport driver for it. I didn't see anything at a glance.
For further research on your port probably go dig through all of the Gekkan Dennou Club diskmag and see whats in there. Thats where I got TMS and CYBMOUSE and also TnTABLET which are all related.
Thanks for the information. I'll definitely try perusing those diskmags.
Meanwhile, I dug up some more first-hand info on tablet use on the X68K (and others) through here:
http://www.lowtech-city.org/blog/index.php?e=187 (http://www.lowtech-city.org/blog/index.php?e=187)
http://www.lowtech-city.org/blog/index.php?e=188 (http://www.lowtech-city.org/blog/index.php?e=188)
Not much relevant info in the way of which tablets work with the X68K outside of what I know already, but there is still a lot of interesting in-depth stuff in there, so it may be of use to someone. This guy seems to have a ton of knowledge to share on his blog, and I had a fun time skimming it.