Korg i3

Contrary to popular belief, it was not Korg's first foray into the realm of auto-accompaniment - it had a minor hit in 1985 with the SAS-20, a home keyboard with built-in speakers.

[1] Previously, the auto-accompaniment concept was not taken seriously by professional users, who saw it more the preserve of home hobbyists, and the market had been dominated by low-cost machines made by the likes of Casio and Yamaha.

There were a further 4 "blank" spaces for user styles to be loaded into non-volatile RAM via a 3.5" DD floppy disk and 4 from a memory card.

There were also two sequencers; a conventional 16-track General MIDI compatible system for the editing and playback of SMF data, whilst there was also a "Backing Sequencer" - effectively a simple recorder for recording of performances using the auto-accompaniment system, but had the ability to add a further 10 tracks over this.

The most obvious sign to the user that the i3 was a departure from the usual auto-accompaniment keyboard format was the lack of built in speakers.