PC-9800
The PC-9800 is a series of 16-bit and 32-bit home computers developed by NEC and first sold in October 1982 in Japan. The line is an upgrade of the earlier PC-8800 series which debuted less than a year earlier and was sold until 2000 with over 50 different models in the series. The line was officially discontinued in 2003. The computer series primarily competed in Japan with the X68000 and FM-Towns, but the PC-9800 series was by and large the dominate architecture in Japan. However, as Windows began to dominate the PC market share, NEC eventually had no choice but to embrace Microsoft's architecture.
The first model of PC-9801 released in 1982 used an Intel 8086 CPU clocked at 5 MHz, 128 KB of RAM. By the late 1990s, the default specs were a Pentium MMX CPU at 233 MHz, and 32 MB of RAM. Storage went from 8" floppy disk drives to 5.25", 3.5" and eventually CD-ROMs, and hard drives became standard and increased in size as well.
Contents
Personal
All through my childhood, I had no idea the PC-9800 series even existed since they made little appearance outside of Japan. In my 20s, I started seeing screenshots of the system on MobyGames in the form of ports of some of my favorite games. This piqued my interest, and I began looking into the interesting history of home computing in Japan. I used emulators to try out a handful of the system's software, but, since it's mostly in Japanese, I haven't dwelled on it too much. I do still find it to be a charming system.
Status
I do not own a PC-9800 computer, and I've never used one in real life.
Review
I don't know enough about this computer series to write a useful review.
Software
I rarely use software on the PC-9800, so I can't speak too much to it's library.
Games
- For all games released on the PC-9800 series, see PC-9800 Games.
Although the PC-9800 series was designed primarily for business, it had a massive library of games made for it including ports of the majority of the most popular games from the 1980-1990s, and plenty of American releases translated into Japanese. However, the PC-9800 wasn't just a platform for ports, a lot of popular games made their debut on it including most of the first Touhou Project games, Policenauts, and many others. The platform was also notorious of making pornographic dating sims.
Media
Documentation
PC-9801 Manual - Technical Data Book.
PC-9801 Manual - BIOS.
PC-9801 Manual - Hardware.
PC-9801 UV21 Manual - Guide.
PC-9801 UV21 Manual - Hardware.
PC-9801 UV21 Manual - BASIC Reference.
PC-9801 UV21 Manual - Introduction to Programming.
Videos
Links
