While in Japan i went to one shop for used stuff, most electronic things had some paper/sticker that explained its condition and date it was tested. Its usually either well maintained or recently fixed (ie. repaired) before put for sale. Some youtubers simply import from Japan things that are now unobtanium, like vintage audio / video equipment in excellent condition.
The "key" command in MS Basic is to assign a command to one of those F1-F10 keys. If there is an "ON" keyword, the "KEY" command can be used conditional to test an input of a F key (ON KEY 1 GOSUB 1000 means that if press F1 the program jumps to line 1000) Auto without parameters, start line numbering at 10 and increments by 10. With parameters, it start line numbering at other number and incrementing with another increment than 10; (AUTO 1,1 start number line from 1 and incrementing the by 1). Time$ was used as variable to set the time (time$=) or to read the time (PRINT time$) I believe that the BASIC syntax is very close (if not identical) to MSX BASIC. When I had my MSX, without any manual or reference about its BASIC dialect, I wrote a small program that printed on the screen the content of the memory in ASCII and it listed the ROM content where I find all the keywords; most of them (98%) had the same syntax in QBASIC and few were just a bit different. Then I used QBASIC help to learn their syntax. But that was back in late 90s when I did not had internet, now I bet you can find all the manuals on some archives sites.
Thank you so much for the insights! It's been a long time since I've waded into the wonderful world of BASIC, and a lot of the unique keywords my brain has forgotten. It would make sense that this BASIC is fairly close to MSX BASIC as I believe both were developed by Microsoft quite close to each other. I really need to get back into programming some BASIC stuff in-between all the weird obtuse assembly programming I've been doing lately, lol.
This is what I was thinking as I have an MSX1 machine and the MSX BASIC looks very similar. anyway, you can stop the auto numbering by hitting ctrl+c (or ctrl+stop) on MSX The TIME variable is incremented by 1 each time the VDP draw the screen (50/60) depending on the display system KEY ON/OFF can be used to show/hide the F keys line at the bottom of the screen, KEY LIST prints all keys on the screen, KEY [number], [string] customize a specific key. the RUN F-key is set with carriage-return character added to the "run" string like this KEY 5, "RUN" + CHR$(13) Thanks Sebastian and David
David! I had that exact same step down transformer. The wire broke off the back of the switch one day as I was switching it on. It gave me a nasty shock, so I took the cover off and discovered that it had really poor build quality, all of the solder joints were dry and the wire was maybe 20AWG copper clad aluminum. You might want to make sure yours is safe, I don’t want you to get zapped!
fellow 8001 owner here. here ars some interesting facts about the machine: - EDIT THIS POINT IS WRONG ( I got the PC 8801 and the 8001 mixed up. my fault!) BASIC has line labels! no need to memorize the line numbers anymore - the BASIC was written by Bill Gates - the oldest JRPGs were released on this system in 1982 - 4mhz is true, but the RAM access is a huge bottleneck, and it basically halves the functional clock speed - HAL Labs came out with something called the PCG-8100 which is effectively a graphics and sound board for the computer. many took advantage of this for better graphics and sound. HAL actually released a mini version of this computer a few years ago with the PCG built in! (it's now a collector's item, the original computer is still way cheaper)
Yes, the Z80 often ran at clock speeds far higher than say a MOS6502, and NEC’s version was probably built on a very solid lithography process. Unfortunately, the Z80 wasn’t particularly efficient, especially when it came to RAM access. Even internally, working from registers, the expansive nature of the ISA competed with transistor budget leading to a lot of overlapping logic which meant a lot of instructions took quite a number of cycles. That said, in 79, that clock speed would have still made this one very fast (and probably expensive) 8bit machine. It certainly was far superior to my first machine, a Vic20 (to my 8yo brain, 32K still sounds like a luxurious amount of RAM - I bet 8001 owners never had to poke at their color ram to eek out an extra kilonibble). Also, is it me or is the video signal and display quality super crisp on the 8001 and that NEC monitor. Very nice machine.
Another fun fact (maybe less useful than the ones you mentioned :) ): The PC's BASIC isn't strictly speaking changing the case of the keywords. I mean, the net effect is that it is. But every BASIC I've used on computers of that era, when you typed a program in, the keywords are actually tokenized (using a case-insensitive comparison to parse the keywords, of course). In RAM, just a single number representing the keyword is stored. So the "conversion" to upper case is really just a matter of the tokens being redisplayed as the spelled-out keyword, where that's always done using upper-case letters.
21:15 ああ、たぶんThis expansion board is probably… a modified board to make the cassette I/F 2400 baud. It was called "Sapporo City Standard"(サッポロ・シティ・スタンダード). I think the switch is for baud rate. 23:53 ｳｻｰ(∩・x・)∩ｳｻｰ
Ha, that 1200 -> 2400/4800 was one of the first modification I made to my Nascom 2 as well (with deadbugs and flying wires). It worked, but it may have made cassette storage a bit less reliable.
@@tommythorn : Maybe a little, but the real reliability problem with cassettes was always the lack of a _resilient_ error correction scheme aimed at fixing block-level errors. Cassettes are vulnerable to having errors that ruin several symbols in a row, and the "just have another copy" approach to error correction meant that having an error at the start of one copy and end of the other copy was enough to render both copies unusable, even though a undamaged version of each symbol of the data was present. Bit of a shame, as it could have been dealt with using a simple block scheme, and fairly small bit of ROM code.
@@absalomdraconisFunny enough, the Nascom 2 _does_ break it down into numbered, checksummed, blocks so you can rewind and try again. I had to do that sometimes and sometimes it read better eventually. However, even 2400 bps is really slow. (UPDATED 4800->2400: I had forgotten that 1200 was originally max and I hacked it to do 2400, but the lack of margin caused me loss of work. 4800 bps was completely hopeless.)
genuinely refreshing to see someone talk about a japanese computer while being familiar with the language, the number of people who'll do it without being able to tell you what a カナ key is has had me frustrated lmao
Japan has a whole world of wonderful computers, both micro and mega, that I would really love to get into. The tricky part (for the large scale machines at least) is either getting me there or getting them here! There's all sorts of interesting history that shaped their computer industry so much differently ours that I think could be a ton of fun to dive into.
@@UsagiElectric as great technology in Japan is, that split electric system, and the reason behind it is nonsense. It should had been unified a century ago like the rest of the world did. So they started electrification using a German generator in one side of the country, and an American in the other, but only had Edison bulbs rated for 100V, lets ignore the fact that Edison actually sent 120v because with DC it usually went down to about 100V on average, then you understand the nonsensical reason they use 100V 50/60. History facts: In the beginning, incandescent bulbs could not be made for 200V+ so even in Europe they had dual voltage service, until Osram figured a way, then they took the correct decision to remove the 120Vish service. America did not, apparently they did not want to bother their customers replace the bulbs... This condemned American homes to use twice the copper than anybody else, and only Japan made it worse by incorrectly sticking to 100V because of the early Edison bulbs... Remember how they struggled to share electricity from one half of the country to the other after the great earthquake of 2011? all because of this ridiculously outdated reason. People born today are never going to see an incandescent bulb in their lifetime! (Unless they follow your steps and somehow get into retro stuff 🙂). Pretty much all Americans have either 208V or 240V in addition to 120V by using two (of 3) 120V phases or a single 240V phase with a middle tap in the transformer (aka split-phase) and have had it for nearly a century. My head doesn't not understand why the Bendix is 120V, its stupid and dangerous, 50A becomes 25A by going 240V for those 6kW. Akihabara is an interesting place, i have been there too ^^ EL PSY CONGROO
The Z80 computers of that era will always be interesting to me. My folks purchased a CPM micro/mini system for their office to do bookkeeping, word processing, and mechanical design calculations. I was the system operator and kept daily data backups up to date. We ran the legs off that little system for 10 years. It is still in storage in the attic of the old shop that was my dad's.
If you didn't know, most digital chips from NEC around that time start with 'upd' but only silkscreen the 'd' of that. So e.g. the 'd3301' is actually an 'upd3301', and if you search for that you find that it is the CRT controller.
It was awesome seeing Akihabara again, I spent nearly every weekend there when I lived in Tokyo. Thanks for the memories and the cool demo of a really neat NEC machine!
This really brings back memories. My dad bought the B variant plus the expansion port, monochrome monitor, dual floppy unit and printer when I was 12. There were some cool games for it that ran in native code. Some of the really fun ones came from old Japanese magazines like ASCII and Japan I/O, but you had to input thousands of lines of hexadecimal values in the memory editor at certain addresses. They could be saved via casette tape, but there was a program that would let you save it to floppies that I was never able to get a hold of. I sunk endless hours in it playing Scramble! and Rally X. It was a real workhorse too. It had a real word processor (Wordstar) and a COBOL compiler my dad used for his actuarial work. It had chunky pixels you could activate through BASIC (I think the command was pset). It would stay active until you entered "console 0,25,0,1". So much fun and built like a tank. I was thinking maybe that breadboard breakout might possibly be some kind of custom programmable character generator.
I only learned of this computer very recently when I was doing my own research for a video on the PC-88 and PC-98 machines. Then it pops up on your channel! Great stuff. Looking forward to seeing more of the impressive PC-8001 😁
My first computer was a Sharp MZ-80K, I got it in 1980. It was released in kit form in 1978 and pre-built in 1979. I used it as my main computer until 1987, when I bought an Acorn Archimedes. I have two MZ-80K machines now.
Hi from Japan. I really enjoyed this movie. I worked for NEC during 90's. I saw some PC-8001s as a terminal for a huge tester or something(for... theiy telephone exchange systems which made many years ago). My first computer was PC-6001(PC-8001's little brother) so I watned PC-8001.
I'm not entirely sure whether NEC is using two byte characters for their Kana or not, but the fact that ハロー and ワールド means that even if they are two byte characters, you can still totally make the same mistake!
@@UsagiElectricI bet they just use bytes, and the Japanese characters are probably character codes that correspond to the ASCII characters on the keyboard plus 128. Should be easy to find out with a for loop that prints chr$(x) and chr$(128+x) for x values between 32 and 127. If I'm wrong, it probably works like MSX Basic but I've never worked with that.
@@JacGoudsmit : Yeah, as I recall the first encoding for Japanese made no attempt at Kanji, just using the _much_ smaller hiragana and/or katakana character sets. The switch to 16 bit characters happened in the 80s I think, but this computer is probably older than that switch.
@@UsagiElectric this sent me on a spiral learning about JIS character sets and stuff How much does it explain USA dominance in tech, that they never had to navigate this? 😄
I had to laugh at the 'inappropriate words' moment when you'd forgotten the connector hood... we've all been there! I have a picture somewhere where someone had worked on soldering a connector onto an industrial multi-wire cable, but to hold the cable in place, the guy had threaded it through the step of a portable ladder.
@@freecultureHeh... Even people that work(ed) daily with electronics like me had "experience" with that. I worked in a recycle division repairing consumer and industrial equipment before I went to IT doing server installments and maintenance (UNIX, Novell Netware, Windows and Linux) and finally retiring. You would think all those years of experience would "burn in" to your brain to never make that mistake again... Yeah - Nope... Even after years I still have that occasional sinking feeling in the stomach when watching your failed handiwork that makes you want you to bang your head...
12:30 I'm shouting at my laptop 13:04 I told you so! 😊 I wonder if there is anyone who has soldered DIN connections who hasn't done this at some stage.
I really love back when they did introduce DIN connectors as 2 halves - easily clicking them together afterwards .... then most connectors was RCA after that ... but damn I have forgotten to but it on many times - and a few times the wrong way around. The lessons learned must be: Think twice - then think again - check everything and then solder once. :D
Goodness me - I wish I'd had that DIN soldering gadget back in 1980s when I used to have to solder up broken BBC Micro cables on a fairly regular basis.
I worked as a bag boy to earn the money for my first computer, a TRS-80, Model 1. I couldn't afford a monitor so I kludged together a RF modulator and ran the -80 on my family's old tube TV. You could barely even see the characters but it was a start. My parents nought me a proper TV monitor for my birthday and it was like heaven!
having a proper monitor makes a world of difference! The PC-8001 can support 80 column display, I don't want to imagine what that would have looked like through an RF modulator, haha.
I was 11 in 81, and I had a Vic-20, that I purchased by working in a video arcade as a tech handing out change, and troubleshooting problems with the machines. I had the tape machine for saving programs, but I could more often type out the program again faster than I could fast forward the tape to location of the saved program... =D C# and javascript are my goto languages now.
I really wanted a TRS-80 but that was just way beyond my means and no amount of birthday and Christmas presents would cover it. I saved up for a Netronics ELF II kit and went down another path. Years later I would find out that my dad listened to my recommendations about the TRS-80 and he secretly had a TRS-80 squirreled away at his office. I’m not sure how I feel about that 😂
@@andrewwasson6153 never had a dad, didn't bother me at the time, but I can now see the advantage of having two parents. Don't see alot of TRS-80s out there anymore.
My guess for the add on board is a high speed cassette recorder storage interface. 600 BAUD default is for the PC-8001. The more common speed was 1200 BAUD using 1200/2400Hz FSK tones. This allowed you record programs or data on the audio tape then reload by playing the tape back into the computer. The location where it plugs in is near the cassette circuit and 8251 also points to something related to the cassette interface.
The PC-8001 used 1200/2400 Hz for space and mark even in its standard CMT format. However, it used 4 cycles of the former for space and 8 cycles of the latter for mark, and thus ran at 300 bps.
LIST waits for enter because you can specify a range of line numbers; also with a lot of BASICs you can do LLIST, and LPRINT to send data to the printer (selections of the program, or arbitrary text, respectively).
You’re lucky that the machine is so clean. Almost all surviving early 8 bit micros from Japan work but most suffer massive discoloration from smoking more than anything. Many have significant rust issues.
Japanese manufacturing and quality just go together. At least I haven't seen any issues with quality on anything from Japan that I have serviced from electronics to machines. Perhaps that is why it still works. Meticulous quality. Am interested in that home brew expansion!
That mod board has a ripple counter, an and-or select, and a hex inverting buffer. I'd put my money on it being some kind of serial multiplexer, designed to allow the computer to talk a data rate it doesn't usually support.
So excited to see this one! I had a PC-8001A as a kid, wrote a bunch of middle school and high school papers in Wordstar on CP/M, lots of silly BASIC programming. It's still in boxes in my closet, hasn't been powered up in probably over 20 years. I guess someday I should pull it out and see if mine still magically works!
I almost bought one in 1982 while living in Japan. Instead, I bought a Casio PC FP-1100 with dual processors: Zilog Z80 and NEC PD7801G, and I bought the 5 1/4 floppy drive accessory and the RF modulator for the TV. I still have it in storage. Also, I had the CP/M operating system. I remember spending hours writing basic programs (inventory tracking programs, graphic & graphing programs, and general electronics application/calculator programs). Old times... Z80 clock speed was less than 2MHz, May be 4MHz for the NEC CPU. Max RAM was 64K for the Z80 and 48K for the NEC CPU.
Fantastic that it is still working! If you run PRINT time$ (or PRINT date$) it will print the time, either actual time (unlikely) or something like seconds since boot. A neat way to use this is to use it to "auto time" something like your stress test program. Set a variable to time$ at the start and a second one again at the end, convert the strings to int and using deduction you can get the seconds the program took to run. But maybe you knew that, this video makes me want to get an old computer with basic running again, thanks, love your videos!
Thank you David for this mention about Japan being 100VAC, totally missed that and been running the phonograph on 120VAC, hopefully didn't do it any harm. Bought it without even being aware of the difference, it was vintage and seems to have been new in the box, so, best deal on eBay. Plus, nifty buying a Technics from Japan.
I really enjoy your enthusiasm and this stuff is fascinating! We carry in our pockets super computers compared to the devices back in the day. I am amazed. Thanks for what you do! I really enjoy learning about this stuff and you make it fun and contagious!
IMHO the main reason why it wasn't popular outside Japan is most likely all those features - the RAM, 80 column display, keyboard, CPU speed etc. at a time other home computers ran quarter of that means it was expensive. Just like pretty much all the subsequent Japanese computers.
It sold really well in Japan for the opposite reason, it was cheap compared to anything else. 168,000 yen and 1300 us for the overseas 8001a model. Even at launch and for some years later many thought it should be sold for 200-250,000 because of the features but I forget who the project leader was didn't want to raise the price. The 80 column and ram was necessary for the 2 byte Japanese characters to be displayed, having native language support helped NEC gain a major market share in Japan until DOS/V came along and opened up the competition.
Amazing!!! We had this model at my school, before they bought Commodores, ie. c.a. 1986. Very sturdy, great keyboard, good look on displays, although a little outdated, was great to learn with it
I have fond memories of a micro (Atari 400) in the home in my early life, but then we became a PC household while I still had Apple II and TRS-80 machines in class. The older I get the more I realize that those micros are the last machines where I can clearly understand what's going on under the hood, while so much of the PC (and especially the modern PC) is abstracted magic.
I could understand a 286 along with the weird addressing modes, ISA bus, and etc etc, probably; though I'm not completely confident on that. The non-PC 8-bit micros and their extremely simple busses definitely fit my head more cleanly.
You can mostly grasp modern computers.. if you go far enough. Obviously can't know everything about every abstraction layer, but the more complex tiered caches, out of order execution - which was invented originally in the highest end IBM 360 model and silently ignored for decades until we ran out of easy miniaturization with silicon to make them faster.. you can learn how a basic operating system works via watchdog timers, interrupt driven task switching, protected modes, and all that. But yes, an 80's computer is probably the only kind one person can know EVERYTHING about, and that's how amazing demo scenes get made, abusing hardware in ways that was never intended via design glitches of sorts.
@@mikafoxx2717 I agree. It is possible to have some grasp on a modern machine, how much of a grasp depends on how much you learn about the different abstraction layers. For me, the last time I could know a machine from instruction set to UI thoroughly was these little micros. Certainly I'm not going to pretend to know how every bit in a high end 360 worked, but there were engineers who had to know that, at least in part, so it clearly wasn't unknowable, OS engineers, security researchers, and compiler writers all need to know modern machines more thoroughly than I do as an IT guy and sometimes programmer. So they've taken the time to learn the abstraction layers and know the insides of the black boxes.
An engineering buddy of mine bought the US version of this machine back in the day, complete with color graphics. It was a great machine, and he programmed all kinds of cool stuff on it.
Man, you make me miss BASIC. I'm old. Back in the day, I needed a degree of randomness. So, I had to work with a psuedo RNG expansion. Those were the days.
I visited Akihabara in 1996 and bought some tiny LEDs and switches. I had only learned some Japanese numbers and was able to point and request how many from the street vendor. Cool place!
The 8257 is the dmac which is a clone of the intel part with the same number. The upd3301 is the nec custom crtc which is also used in the nec pc-8801 and the olympia boss.
If the Intel 8257 is the chip used in the IBM PC, then it is itself a clone of an AMD DMAC that they meant as a generic choice for multiple processors. The x86 era Intel competitor was... ambitious, and expensive enough that it was probably only used for minicomputers and mainframes (it cost about as much as the x86 itself, something like 3 times as much as the DMAC that the PC actually used).
@@absalomdraconisNope, it's the 8237 which was used in the IBM PC which was a clone of the AM9517. The 9517 is an iterative improvement of the 8257 which was designed by intel themselves. The intel x86 dmac is the 8089 which, yes, was expensive, used in very few designs and bad (i've written an emulation of it).
Just as an FYI nearly all Japanese electronic power supplies can handle US voltages 10 volts is not much in the land of AC. The grid voltage at your outlet routinely swings upwards of 10V up and 20 volts down depending on load conditions on the national grid. Japan's grid is much the same but more likely to swing up usually do to differences in how their power grid is managed. I also know this from having ran many Japanese pieces of studio audio gear just off US mains due to the tendency of many step down transformers to be noisy electrically thanks to cheap transformer cores. Edit: I forgot to point out this applies to switch mode power supplies, linear supplies should be ran with a step down transformer always to avoid heat issues.
Wow, this brings back memories! My brother had it, and I used to load from cassette and play games on it. PC-8001 was very popular PC in 8-bit era. There are A LOT of games written on PC-8001.
For NEC chips that start with "D", prefix with "uPD" instead. So, uPD8257 is an Intel second-source 8257 DMAC, uPD3301 is your CRTC. I forget what "uPD" was supposed to stand for, but the "u" is a stylized Greek Mu, so that probably had something to do with it, something like "micro processor design" would be my guess. Most NEC chips of that era that weren't "glue logic" chips (eg 74xx series) were "uPD" chips. EDIT 1 -- that power supply would almost _guaranteed_ be fine on US wall power, the voltage sag tolerances on AC wall power here in the USA are just ridiculously high. Figure acceptable range to be somewhere around 90-150 v AC.
150v RMS is higher than I've ever heard of in the US, but certainly I've heard of 135v RMS. However, that doesn't actually mean the power supply will be safe, since it's from a _lower voltage_ country. Your assumption would almost certainly be right if it was the other way around.
N-BASIC has no "CLS" (Clear screen) command. We used "PRINT CHAR$(12);" instead of it. I really love NEC PC-8001 and 8801 series. Still own PC-8801 mk2 SR.
That display can be seen in the 1983 movie "WarGames". When David Lightman is in the library trying to get more information on Dr. Falken and has a chronology printed up by the librarian toward the end of that montage. You can briefly see the same model display as the printer is printing out a document.
4MHz was pretty standard for a Z80; the different architecture means at that clock rate it runs at about the same speed as a 1MHz 6502. TIME$ was a syntax error because BASIC doesn't like plain expressions; you have to do something with them. PRINT TIME$ would have printed out its idea of the current time of day, which could be set from some onboard real-time clock but was usually just set to midnight at power up.
Thank you, Happy to learn about the HELLORD meme, I saw it on one some of your previous videos and thought it came from a huge memory overlap bug on one of your old computers :p Looking forward to the retro-engeneering video
Anyone who is interested in the PC-88 and beyond, I recommend Mr. Jakes’ PC-88 Paradise as a part of Basement Brothers! I wondered what made the computer tic for him, and now, thanks to this video, I understand now!
Stoked to see some NEC hardware, always had a soft spot for the gaming software that was developed on them. That expansion board is intriguing, hoping you're able to figure out what exactly it does. If the luck from the computer carries over, it might even still be working~
One of the first computers I ever used was a NEC PC9801M and it was GORGEOUS... Learn x68 Assembly with that machine... I'd love to get my hands in one of those again...
My first printer back in the day was a NEC PC8023A. I used it in combination with an Acorn Electron. 😅Never knew until today NEC had a matching computer. Nice! Great video('s)
Aah, the ol' perfboard jank conundrum. Ive had a few ham radios with such a wonder in them, No idea what it does, but someone obviously thought it was a good idea enough to spend a few evenings crafting some bespoke wizardry. I myself have built a few things, especially when I was an electronics technician, that have gone out into the world to do their job, and come back 5 years later for service or upgrades or whatever, and I have NO IDEA what it was for. 100% sure I built it, little trademark habits and fab techniques, but cant remember at all what it was for. can usually figure it out by sifting through the server backups or back to first principals, but its a weird feeling, 'I know I made it, but what the hell for??". That is kinda the rub in a custom electronics shop, especially when you know there is a 'right way' to do something, but that takes a part with a 2 week lead time, and the customer needed it yesterday afternoon. you can get a little... creative. have fun with that. PS, I do really enjoy your bunnies making an appearance. as an Aussie, Wabbits are a scourge and I really am only familiar with them down the scope of a rifle, and learning basic biology to prep them for cooking or cat food (and our cat psychically knew when we had been hunting, she LOOVED her some fresh rabbit, pestering us before even the truck was switched off, even having a different meow from her normal 'feed me' when wabbit involved, more excited and questioning) . I do rather love them, but thats cos Mum refused to eat them, so it was a Manly Man thing Dad n I would do, pop a few bunnies, set a fire by the river, process em down and roast over the coals with bacon and potatoes for lunch. A good lesson, where food comes from, killing, guts etc, meat does not come from a plastic box. Thanks Dad. If it was a camping trip a stew or pot roast. they also make a really decent curry, go very well with a full fat coconut cream. but the little buggers are really quite cute. if only they weren't so ecologically destructive.
This was my first computer, bought in Hong Kong around 1981. Japanese keyboard and manuals. Unfortunately all my cassette tapes have been lost: I spent hours typing in the machine code and BASIC headers for all the games on the early 80s. I still have the computer and colour monitor in storage. I’ve also got a full listing of the NEC BASIC in a limited run Japanese book of the time.
I have forgotten the sleave so many times years ago, that my brain is trained to put that on first. Even watching your video, the first thing that popped into my head was "don't forget the cable restraint". 🤣
[14:00] Yes, it freaking works. (笑) And kudos on the nihongo hellorld! [19:00] AUTO also takes a line number to start with, and an optional increment. Good ol' standard Z-80 MS-BASIC stuff. As for bodge boards, I have my own that I put in my old TRS-80, to shift lowercase descenders down by two pixels. And it does some other stuff with the character address lines that after fully reverse-engineering it, I have no idea what it was supposed to do! (And I made it!) I tried to just run the computer to see what it did, but the TRS-80 video output uses some janky 74Cxx gates that can flake out, and mine had indeed flaked out. That board you have is a bit simpler, and the best start at trying to figure out what it does is to find out where those blue wires go. I am so tempted to try to figure out the circuit from stills of the video, but I have to resist, I have so many other things to decipher!
While you were soldering the DIN connector I had this lingering, familiar fear that you might have missed the connector body. When you revealed that you did, I FELT it. I've been doing electronics for like 20 years and it still happens to me. With connectors and heat shrink tubing alike.
8:40 as somebody who got bored one night and went deep down the rabbit hole of searching for Japanese electric. Those are some amazing photos and video!
Haha! I just caught myself trying to find your channel back to follow up on my post and I put usagi denki by mistake...anyway, yeah you can find PC-6082 Data Recorders for like 1000 Yen still. Also, you can use the mod that I talked about along with your keitai to play WAV files and load programs at 1200 baud? On PC watch, it shows a pi zero pascom mini came out in 2019. Anyway, like your content. I really liked your 1^bit CPU stuff. At work here, I have been trying to put together a project for out students to built a 1 bit CPU with a semicondictor physics faculty and device faculty member who is retiring this year. We have been working together for about 12 years at the same place and have researched fabrication methods for junctions and devices/lithography that can be done in basically any reasonably equipped high school science lab with equipment and in a natural air environment. I would like to try an implement that kill the bits game in the lab here.
I don't know if we can do this on a PC-8001, but on a PC-6001, I was able to force the line numbers to be rewritten to 65535 using POKE so that the LIST command would not show the source code. I think that was the beginning of my career as an engineer (^_^)/
So to not forget the connector cover, before soldering, I like to put it on the cable then tie the cable in a large knot with the cover inside the knot. That way it doesn't fall off. Get in the habit of doing that as the step right after you cut the cable.
I had never heard of this one before but certainly, looking at the graphical capabilities, it was pretty good for the day. And the keyboard looks nice too. Very lovely. I guess it largely boils down to how it was priced and remembering that you needed a monitor as well.
The mystery perfboard looks like a real time clock... I did not see much of it, but it gave me that impression... And the button may be to adjust for 50/60 Hz power
On second thought... D flipflops, latches... Could be a buffer... No RTC chip there... Please disclose the chip numbers of those to the right... One is almost erased and the other is blurry.
Japanese resident here. My local hardoff store has a PC-8001 in great condition that I've been eyeing off for quite a while. It's kind of on the costly side and my wife has made her feelings clear about me buying any more retro computers, however after seeing this video I might have to pull the trigger.
in regards to why it didn't sell well outside of Japan, in the 70s and early 80s it seems most of the English speaking markets prefered to either buy American computers or produce/rebrand their own. It's a similar issue to the MSX computers; they sold really well in non-English speaking markets (its seems there were more total MSX systems solds than C64s) but made little-to-no penetration in the English speaking ones. It really wasn't until the mass wave of turbo XT clones out of Taiwan, Korea and Japan flooded the markek from around 1985-1989, which massively dropped PC prices, that English speaking markets seemed to accept buying Asian made computers.
I don't know a single thing in Japanese, but hearing you read the Japanese aloud before translating was so cool. (If I wasn't already learning three languages, I might be tempted to start learning it for myself...)
No, it was my DEC LSI-11 I build! I loved the DEC 11/45. I programmed them in assembly for real-time missile, aircraft, and radar systems with lots of hardware in the loop!
Wow, I used to own one of those NEC monitors, as seen in the movie War Games. I modded mine to run from 12v. I also modded my Atari 2600 none wooden edition. To also run from 12v. I took them on holiday with me and was able to game on the move in my Uncles RV that we borrowed.
You can find some here in Brazil for about 400 dollars. I think is due to the fact that we had a huge quantity of Japanese immigrants (specially here in São Paulo) and a machine where you can write Kana is appreciated. A friend of mine had one. Ohhh I loved when you forgot the cap of the DIN connector out. I curse so much when I do things like that, it is good to see that I am not alone.
I wonder if we went in Akihabara in the same years. I lived in Tokyo from 1990 to 1995. (I was working in IT ) . I brought back in France several elctric transformers for 100v-220v to keep my eletronic devices working. なつかしい。
Speaking of home / mini-computer cross-overs, it would be great to do a video about the ancestors of TMS9900, which were discrete TTL CPUs used in TI mini computers. It would be fun to see a 99-series mini computer in action!
My guess is that the small expansion board enables graphics modes on the CRTC chip that are available in the 8001A, or that changes the memory map somehow. Maybe it was used with an additional ROM chip that wasn’t populated on your board, so it doesn’t do anything when you push the button. 😢 You’d really need to see what voltages/signals are on the connector without the board plugged in. My guess is; Gnd, +5, +/-12, composite video, clock signal from the CPU, reset, and maybe h/v sync pulses, and one or two address lines so you can map in an external (cartridge, gayubus?) or internal ROM (in the unused socket). Heck, maybe it’s a parental lockout switch so it wouldn’t play game carts; that way, the children would do their homework instead. 😊
I have a TI 994A that I haven't tried troubleshooting years, you reminded me of it so I guess I need to pull it out from under my bed now that I know a little more
Probably the power supply. It uses a weird split linear / switching power supply. Multiple voltages from an external multitap transformer to a switch mode supply inside. Probably easier to rip all that and replace with a compact modern power supply.
I must have made up a 1000 connectors so far in my life. It never ends. But I get exactly what I need and its the right length. Gives me great satisfaction.
Cool little computer. I never got into PCs as a 80/90s kid, we had an ARM based desktop computer, an Acorn A3020, i used to consider early PCs silly as they where a massive step back. Fun fact, the later Acorn Risc Machines ( or ARM for short) could emulate a 386 faster than a 386 could run :).
The TRS-80 Model III had a couple of commands that I haven't thought of in a long while, but your use of 'auto' reminded me. The other ones are TRON and TROFF, which will print the line number being executed. Handy for finding bugs.
What a lovely little machine that is! And huge respect that it's Japanese! It's like this channel has finally melded two of your loves! Now if only this thing were in a car...
14:04
something's wrong, it booted right up
🤣🤣🤣
You're telling me, nothing ever just works!
This was a welcome change after the ADDS Envoy keeps kicking my butt, haha.
While in Japan i went to one shop for used stuff, most electronic things had some paper/sticker that explained its condition and date it was tested. Its usually either well maintained or recently fixed (ie. repaired) before put for sale. Some youtubers simply import from Japan things that are now unobtanium, like vintage audio / video equipment in excellent condition.
The "key" command in MS Basic is to assign a command to one of those F1-F10 keys. If there is an "ON" keyword, the "KEY" command can be used conditional to test an input of a F key (ON KEY 1 GOSUB 1000 means that if press F1 the program jumps to line 1000)
Auto without parameters, start line numbering at 10 and increments by 10. With parameters, it start line numbering at other number and incrementing with another increment than 10; (AUTO 1,1 start number line from 1 and incrementing the by 1).
Time$ was used as variable to set the time (time$=) or to read the time (PRINT time$)
I believe that the BASIC syntax is very close (if not identical) to MSX BASIC.
When I had my MSX, without any manual or reference about its BASIC dialect, I wrote a small program that printed on the screen the content of the memory in ASCII and it listed the ROM content where I find all the keywords; most of them (98%) had the same syntax in QBASIC and few were just a bit different. Then I used QBASIC help to learn their syntax.
But that was back in late 90s when I did not had internet, now I bet you can find all the manuals on some archives sites.
Thank you so much for the insights!
It's been a long time since I've waded into the wonderful world of BASIC, and a lot of the unique keywords my brain has forgotten. It would make sense that this BASIC is fairly close to MSX BASIC as I believe both were developed by Microsoft quite close to each other. I really need to get back into programming some BASIC stuff in-between all the weird obtuse assembly programming I've been doing lately, lol.
This is what I was thinking as I have an MSX1 machine and the MSX BASIC looks very similar.
anyway, you can stop the auto numbering by hitting ctrl+c (or ctrl+stop) on MSX
The TIME variable is incremented by 1 each time the VDP draw the screen (50/60) depending on the display system
KEY ON/OFF can be used to show/hide the F keys line at the bottom of the screen, KEY LIST prints all keys on the screen, KEY [number], [string] customize a specific key.
the RUN F-key is set with carriage-return character added to the "run" string like this
KEY 5, "RUN" + CHR$(13)
Thanks Sebastian and David
David! I had that exact same step down transformer. The wire broke off the back of the switch one day as I was switching it on. It gave me a nasty shock, so I took the cover off and discovered that it had really poor build quality, all of the solder joints were dry and the wire was maybe 20AWG copper clad aluminum. You might want to make sure yours is safe, I don’t want you to get zapped!
fellow 8001 owner here. here ars some interesting facts about the machine:
- EDIT THIS POINT IS WRONG ( I got the PC 8801 and the 8001 mixed up. my fault!) BASIC has line labels! no need to memorize the line numbers anymore
- the BASIC was written by Bill Gates
- the oldest JRPGs were released on this system in 1982
- 4mhz is true, but the RAM access is a huge bottleneck, and it basically halves the functional clock speed
- HAL Labs came out with something called the PCG-8100 which is effectively a graphics and sound board for the computer. many took advantage of this for better graphics and sound. HAL actually released a mini version of this computer a few years ago with the PCG built in! (it's now a collector's item, the original computer is still way cheaper)
what is the name of that jrpg?
I'd love it having BBC basic. Not only the structured programming but Microsoft basic is soooo slow 😒
Yes, the Z80 often ran at clock speeds far higher than say a MOS6502, and NEC’s version was probably built on a very solid lithography process. Unfortunately, the Z80 wasn’t particularly efficient, especially when it came to RAM access. Even internally, working from registers, the expansive nature of the ISA competed with transistor budget leading to a lot of overlapping logic which meant a lot of instructions took quite a number of cycles.
That said, in 79, that clock speed would have still made this one very fast (and probably expensive) 8bit machine. It certainly was far superior to my first machine, a Vic20 (to my 8yo brain, 32K still sounds like a luxurious amount of RAM - I bet 8001 owners never had to poke at their color ram to eek out an extra kilonibble).
Also, is it me or is the video signal and display quality super crisp on the 8001 and that NEC monitor. Very nice machine.
@@smakfu1375is not you, monochrome CRTs have a great resolution and are very crisp, most of them were used for 80 columns displays
Another fun fact (maybe less useful than the ones you mentioned :) ):
The PC's BASIC isn't strictly speaking changing the case of the keywords. I mean, the net effect is that it is. But every BASIC I've used on computers of that era, when you typed a program in, the keywords are actually tokenized (using a case-insensitive comparison to parse the keywords, of course). In RAM, just a single number representing the keyword is stored.
So the "conversion" to upper case is really just a matter of the tokens being redisplayed as the spelled-out keyword, where that's always done using upper-case letters.
21:15 ああ、たぶんThis expansion board is probably… a modified board to make the cassette I/F 2400 baud. It was called "Sapporo City Standard"(サッポロ・シティ・スタンダード). I think the switch is for baud rate.
23:53 ｳｻｰ(∩・x・)∩ｳｻｰ
Sounds like a play on Kansas City Standard.
So you could get the best ramen and 4x the data from the same place? Neat!
Ha, that 1200 -> 2400/4800 was one of the first modification I made to my Nascom 2 as well (with deadbugs and flying wires). It worked, but it may have made cassette storage a bit less reliable.
@@tommythorn : Maybe a little, but the real reliability problem with cassettes was always the lack of a _resilient_ error correction scheme aimed at fixing block-level errors. Cassettes are vulnerable to having errors that ruin several symbols in a row, and the "just have another copy" approach to error correction meant that having an error at the start of one copy and end of the other copy was enough to render both copies unusable, even though a undamaged version of each symbol of the data was present. Bit of a shame, as it could have been dealt with using a simple block scheme, and fairly small bit of ROM code.
@@absalomdraconisFunny enough, the Nascom 2 _does_ break it down into numbered, checksummed, blocks so you can rewind and try again. I had to do that sometimes and sometimes it read better eventually. However, even 2400 bps is really slow. (UPDATED 4800->2400: I had forgotten that 1200 was originally max and I hacked it to do 2400, but the lack of margin caused me loss of work. 4800 bps was completely hopeless.)
genuinely refreshing to see someone talk about a japanese computer while being familiar with the language, the number of people who'll do it without being able to tell you what a カナ key is has had me frustrated lmao
Japan has a whole world of wonderful computers, both micro and mega, that I would really love to get into. The tricky part (for the large scale machines at least) is either getting me there or getting them here!
There's all sorts of interesting history that shaped their computer industry so much differently ours that I think could be a ton of fun to dive into.
私も！
I only know enough to go digging into lexilogos kana keyboard and google translate to get a giggle out of kasetsuto and resetsuto.
Indeed. It does not take much to take an interest in other cultures
@@UsagiElectric as great technology in Japan is, that split electric system, and the reason behind it is nonsense. It should had been unified a century ago like the rest of the world did. So they started electrification using a German generator in one side of the country, and an American in the other, but only had Edison bulbs rated for 100V, lets ignore the fact that Edison actually sent 120v because with DC it usually went down to about 100V on average, then you understand the nonsensical reason they use 100V 50/60.
History facts: In the beginning, incandescent bulbs could not be made for 200V+ so even in Europe they had dual voltage service, until Osram figured a way, then they took the correct decision to remove the 120Vish service. America did not, apparently they did not want to bother their customers replace the bulbs... This condemned American homes to use twice the copper than anybody else, and only Japan made it worse by incorrectly sticking to 100V because of the early Edison bulbs... Remember how they struggled to share electricity from one half of the country to the other after the great earthquake of 2011? all because of this ridiculously outdated reason. People born today are never going to see an incandescent bulb in their lifetime! (Unless they follow your steps and somehow get into retro stuff 🙂). Pretty much all Americans have either 208V or 240V in addition to 120V by using two (of 3) 120V phases or a single 240V phase with a middle tap in the transformer (aka split-phase) and have had it for nearly a century. My head doesn't not understand why the Bendix is 120V, its stupid and dangerous, 50A becomes 25A by going 240V for those 6kW.
Akihabara is an interesting place, i have been there too ^^ EL PSY CONGROO
The Z80 computers of that era will always be interesting to me. My folks purchased a CPM micro/mini system for their office to do bookkeeping, word processing, and mechanical design calculations. I was the system operator and kept daily data backups up to date. We ran the legs off that little system for 10 years. It is still in storage in the attic of the old shop that was my dad's.
That DIN holder - what a game changer! The way I’ve been doing it, I now feel like a cave man smashing rocks together!
And it even reminds you to install the plug case before soldering. Not that it would help, as we see...
I was given a late 70s hifi system that uses din instead of rca. This will be great to make custom cables for it.
If you didn't know, most digital chips from NEC around that time start with 'upd' but only silkscreen the 'd' of that. So e.g. the 'd3301' is actually an 'upd3301', and if you search for that you find that it is the CRT controller.
In the handheld VFD games they do silkscreen the whole µPD for their 4-bit calculator MCU's, in datasheets the micro symbol is often changed to a u.
It was awesome seeing Akihabara again, I spent nearly every weekend there when I lived in Tokyo. Thanks for the memories and the cool demo of a really neat NEC machine!
This really brings back memories. My dad bought the B variant plus the expansion port, monochrome monitor, dual floppy unit and printer when I was 12. There were some cool games for it that ran in native code. Some of the really fun ones came from old Japanese magazines like ASCII and Japan I/O, but you had to input thousands of lines of hexadecimal values in the memory editor at certain addresses. They could be saved via casette tape, but there was a program that would let you save it to floppies that I was never able to get a hold of. I sunk endless hours in it playing Scramble! and Rally X. It was a real workhorse too. It had a real word processor (Wordstar) and a COBOL compiler my dad used for his actuarial work. It had chunky pixels you could activate through BASIC (I think the command was pset). It would stay active until you entered "console 0,25,0,1". So much fun and built like a tank. I was thinking maybe that breadboard breakout might possibly be some kind of custom programmable character generator.
I am SO HERE for this! I love all your computers big and small.
Thank you so much!
I only learned of this computer very recently when I was doing my own research for a video on the PC-88 and PC-98 machines. Then it pops up on your channel! Great stuff. Looking forward to seeing more of the impressive PC-8001 😁
My first computer was a Sharp MZ-80K, I got it in 1980. It was released in kit form in 1978 and pre-built in 1979. I used it as my main computer until 1987, when I bought an Acorn Archimedes. I have two MZ-80K machines now.
Hi from Japan. I really enjoyed this movie.
I worked for NEC during 90's. I saw some PC-8001s as a terminal for a huge tester or something(for... theiy telephone exchange systems which made many years ago).
My first computer was PC-6001(PC-8001's little brother) so I watned PC-8001.
I love that Hellorld has an equivalent in Japanese!
I'm not entirely sure whether NEC is using two byte characters for their Kana or not, but the fact that ハロー and ワールド means that even if they are two byte characters, you can still totally make the same mistake!
@@UsagiElectricI bet they just use bytes, and the Japanese characters are probably character codes that correspond to the ASCII characters on the keyboard plus 128. Should be easy to find out with a for loop that prints chr$(x) and chr$(128+x) for x values between 32 and 127.
If I'm wrong, it probably works like MSX Basic but I've never worked with that.
@@JacGoudsmit : Yeah, as I recall the first encoding for Japanese made no attempt at Kanji, just using the _much_ smaller hiragana and/or katakana character sets. The switch to 16 bit characters happened in the 80s I think, but this computer is probably older than that switch.
@@UsagiElectric this sent me on a spiral learning about JIS character sets and stuff
How much does it explain USA dominance in tech, that they never had to navigate this? 😄
I had to laugh at the 'inappropriate words' moment when you'd forgotten the connector hood... we've all been there! I have a picture somewhere where someone had worked on soldering a connector onto an industrial multi-wire cable, but to hold the cable in place, the guy had threaded it through the step of a portable ladder.
yeah i agree we all have been there... too exited to try it and forget the stupid hood...
@@freecultureHeh... Even people that work(ed) daily with electronics like me had "experience" with that. I worked in a recycle division repairing consumer and industrial equipment before I went to IT doing server installments and maintenance (UNIX, Novell Netware, Windows and Linux) and finally retiring. You would think all those years of experience would "burn in" to your brain to never make that mistake again... Yeah - Nope... Even after years I still have that occasional sinking feeling in the stomach when watching your failed handiwork that makes you want you to bang your head...
At that point I'd probably just get an angle grinder and cut the ladder off :D
12:30 I'm shouting at my laptop
13:04 I told you so! 😊
I wonder if there is anyone who has soldered DIN connections who hasn't done this at some stage.
Haha, I feel like it's a right of passage!
Me thinking: Ah, exactly here I would have forgotten the casing.
...
Wait a moment, where is the casing?
...
ROFL!
I really love back when they did introduce DIN connectors as 2 halves - easily clicking them together afterwards .... then most connectors was RCA after that ... but damn I have forgotten to but it on many times - and a few times the wrong way around.
The lessons learned must be: Think twice - then think again - check everything and then solder once. :D
Sure. From DIN to the rubber boot on the transaxle...
not din connectors but crimping ethernet cables it happens all the time
Goodness me - I wish I'd had that DIN soldering gadget back in 1980s when I used to have to solder up broken BBC Micro cables on a fairly regular basis.
0:51 and you did it again! You're too good!
I worked as a bag boy to earn the money for my first computer, a TRS-80, Model 1. I couldn't afford a monitor so I kludged together a RF modulator and ran the -80 on my family's old tube TV. You could barely even see the characters but it was a start. My parents nought me a proper TV monitor for my birthday and it was like heaven!
having a proper monitor makes a world of difference! The PC-8001 can support 80 column display, I don't want to imagine what that would have looked like through an RF modulator, haha.
@@UsagiElectric- 🙂
I was 11 in 81, and I had a Vic-20, that I purchased by working in a video arcade as a tech handing out change, and troubleshooting problems with the machines. I had the tape machine for saving programs, but I could more often type out the program again faster than I could fast forward the tape to location of the saved program... =D
C# and javascript are my goto languages now.
I really wanted a TRS-80 but that was just way beyond my means and no amount of birthday and Christmas presents would cover it. I saved up for a Netronics ELF II kit and went down another path. Years later I would find out that my dad listened to my recommendations about the TRS-80 and he secretly had a TRS-80 squirreled away at his office. I’m not sure how I feel about that 😂
@@andrewwasson6153 never had a dad, didn't bother me at the time, but I can now see the advantage of having two parents. Don't see alot of TRS-80s out there anymore.
My guess for the add on board is a high speed cassette recorder storage interface. 600 BAUD default is for the PC-8001. The more common speed was 1200 BAUD using 1200/2400Hz FSK tones. This allowed you record programs or data on the audio tape then reload by playing the tape back into the computer. The location where it plugs in is near the cassette circuit and 8251 also points to something related to the cassette interface.
The PC-8001 used 1200/2400 Hz for space and mark even in its standard CMT format. However, it used 4 cycles of the former for space and 8 cycles of the latter for mark, and thus ran at 300 bps.
LIST waits for enter because you can specify a range of line numbers; also with a lot of BASICs you can do LLIST, and LPRINT to send data to the printer (selections of the program, or arbitrary text, respectively).
You’re lucky that the machine is so clean. Almost all surviving early 8 bit micros from Japan work but most suffer massive discoloration from smoking more than anything. Many have significant rust issues.
Japanese manufacturing and quality just go together. At least I haven't seen any issues with quality on anything from Japan that I have serviced from electronics to machines. Perhaps that is why it still works. Meticulous quality. Am interested in that home brew expansion!
Hence my YT name. If I ran into anything Made In Japan at good will, I take it home. It always works.
That mod board has a ripple counter, an and-or select, and a hex inverting buffer. I'd put my money on it being some kind of serial multiplexer, designed to allow the computer to talk a data rate it doesn't usually support.
So excited to see this one! I had a PC-8001A as a kid, wrote a bunch of middle school and high school papers in Wordstar on CP/M, lots of silly BASIC programming. It's still in boxes in my closet, hasn't been powered up in probably over 20 years. I guess someday I should pull it out and see if mine still magically works!
I like all those little individual disc decoupling caps next to each an every chip. These folks gave a shit!
I almost bought one in 1982 while living in Japan. Instead, I bought a Casio PC FP-1100 with dual processors: Zilog Z80 and NEC PD7801G, and I bought the 5 1/4 floppy drive accessory and the RF modulator for the TV. I still have it in storage. Also, I had the CP/M operating system. I remember spending hours writing basic programs (inventory tracking programs, graphic & graphing programs, and general electronics application/calculator programs). Old times... Z80 clock speed was less than 2MHz, May be 4MHz for the NEC CPU. Max RAM was 64K for the Z80 and 48K for the NEC CPU.
Lol, the forgot-to-slide-in-the-sleeve part does bring back memories!
Fantastic that it is still working!
If you run PRINT time$ (or PRINT date$) it will print the time, either actual time (unlikely) or something like seconds since boot. A neat way to use this is to use it to "auto time" something like your stress test program. Set a variable to time$ at the start and a second one again at the end, convert the strings to int and using deduction you can get the seconds the program took to run.
But maybe you knew that, this video makes me want to get an old computer with basic running again, thanks, love your videos!
Awesome info, as usual. Thanks for sharing!
Thank you David for this mention about Japan being 100VAC, totally missed that and been running the phonograph on 120VAC, hopefully didn't do it any harm.
Bought it without even being aware of the difference, it was vintage and seems to have been new in the box, so, best deal on eBay. Plus, nifty buying a Technics from Japan.
Wow. Some amazing footage of vintage computing and natural beauty. Two of my favorite things. Thank you for sharing!
Proper old-school VT100-style keyboard clatter. Love it. Mine was a TRASH-80 clone back in the day, more cheap & cheerful
I really enjoy your enthusiasm and this stuff is fascinating! We carry in our pockets super computers compared to the devices back in the day. I am amazed. Thanks for what you do! I really enjoy learning about this stuff and you make it fun and contagious!
your enthusiasm, as always, is infectious.
Welcome to the "I forgot to slip the casing on first" club. That must have happened with almost everybody...
Very nice to see someone who is happily excited about our hobby. 😀
IMHO the main reason why it wasn't popular outside Japan is most likely all those features - the RAM, 80 column display, keyboard, CPU speed etc. at a time other home computers ran quarter of that means it was expensive. Just like pretty much all the subsequent Japanese computers.
It sold really well in Japan for the opposite reason, it was cheap compared to anything else. 168,000 yen and 1300 us for the overseas 8001a model.
Even at launch and for some years later many thought it should be sold for 200-250,000 because of the features but I forget who the project leader was didn't want to raise the price.
The 80 column and ram was necessary for the 2 byte Japanese characters to be displayed, having native language support helped NEC gain a major market share in Japan until DOS/V came along and opened up the competition.
Its very shape calms me.
Amazing!!! We had this model at my school, before they bought Commodores, ie. c.a. 1986. Very sturdy, great keyboard, good look on displays, although a little outdated, was great to learn with it
@13:00 ROFL!!! We've all been there mate! Even a bloke with your skills. Do love the effort!
I have fond memories of a micro (Atari 400) in the home in my early life, but then we became a PC household while I still had Apple II and TRS-80 machines in class. The older I get the more I realize that those micros are the last machines where I can clearly understand what's going on under the hood, while so much of the PC (and especially the modern PC) is abstracted magic.
Original PC and 286 is also not too hard to understand. The complicated stuff started later when you got caches added etc.
I could understand a 286 along with the weird addressing modes, ISA bus, and etc etc, probably; though I'm not completely confident on that. The non-PC 8-bit micros and their extremely simple busses definitely fit my head more cleanly.
You can mostly grasp modern computers.. if you go far enough. Obviously can't know everything about every abstraction layer, but the more complex tiered caches, out of order execution - which was invented originally in the highest end IBM 360 model and silently ignored for decades until we ran out of easy miniaturization with silicon to make them faster.. you can learn how a basic operating system works via watchdog timers, interrupt driven task switching, protected modes, and all that.
But yes, an 80's computer is probably the only kind one person can know EVERYTHING about, and that's how amazing demo scenes get made, abusing hardware in ways that was never intended via design glitches of sorts.
@@mikafoxx2717 I agree. It is possible to have some grasp on a modern machine, how much of a grasp depends on how much you learn about the different abstraction layers. For me, the last time I could know a machine from instruction set to UI thoroughly was these little micros.
Certainly I'm not going to pretend to know how every bit in a high end 360 worked, but there were engineers who had to know that, at least in part, so it clearly wasn't unknowable,
OS engineers, security researchers, and compiler writers all need to know modern machines more thoroughly than I do as an IT guy and sometimes programmer. So they've taken the time to learn the abstraction layers and know the insides of the black boxes.
An engineering buddy of mine bought the US version of this machine back in the day, complete with color graphics. It was a great machine, and he programmed all kinds of cool stuff on it.
Man, you make me miss BASIC.
I'm old. Back in the day, I needed a degree of randomness. So, I had to work with a psuedo RNG expansion. Those were the days.
I visited Akihabara in 1996 and bought some tiny LEDs and switches. I had only learned some Japanese numbers and was able to point and request how many from the street vendor. Cool place!
Very interesting! And the start-up screen and BASIC with those function keys very much resembles the later MSX standard!
The 8257 is the dmac which is a clone of the intel part with the same number. The upd3301 is the nec custom crtc which is also used in the nec pc-8801 and the olympia boss.
If the Intel 8257 is the chip used in the IBM PC, then it is itself a clone of an AMD DMAC that they meant as a generic choice for multiple processors. The x86 era Intel competitor was... ambitious, and expensive enough that it was probably only used for minicomputers and mainframes (it cost about as much as the x86 itself, something like 3 times as much as the DMAC that the PC actually used).
@@absalomdraconisNope, it's the 8237 which was used in the IBM PC which was a clone of the AM9517. The 9517 is an iterative improvement of the 8257 which was designed by intel themselves. The intel x86 dmac is the 8089 which, yes, was expensive, used in very few designs and bad (i've written an emulation of it).
This looks like a perfectly wonderful machine, and being able to do kana out of the box is a real plus. I'm sure you'll find a home for it.
Just as an FYI nearly all Japanese electronic power supplies can handle US voltages 10 volts is not much in the land of AC. The grid voltage at your outlet routinely swings upwards of 10V up and 20 volts down depending on load conditions on the national grid. Japan's grid is much the same but more likely to swing up usually do to differences in how their power grid is managed. I also know this from having ran many Japanese pieces of studio audio gear just off US mains due to the tendency of many step down transformers to be noisy electrically thanks to cheap transformer cores.
Edit: I forgot to point out this applies to switch mode power supplies, linear supplies should be ran with a step down transformer always to avoid heat issues.
Wow, this brings back memories! My brother had it, and I used to load from cassette and play games on it. PC-8001 was very popular PC in 8-bit era. There are A LOT of games written on PC-8001.
For NEC chips that start with "D", prefix with "uPD" instead. So, uPD8257 is an Intel second-source 8257 DMAC, uPD3301 is your CRTC. I forget what "uPD" was supposed to stand for, but the "u" is a stylized Greek Mu, so that probably had something to do with it, something like "micro processor design" would be my guess. Most NEC chips of that era that weren't "glue logic" chips (eg 74xx series) were "uPD" chips.
EDIT 1 -- that power supply would almost _guaranteed_ be fine on US wall power, the voltage sag tolerances on AC wall power here in the USA are just ridiculously high. Figure acceptable range to be somewhere around 90-150 v AC.
150v RMS is higher than I've ever heard of in the US, but certainly I've heard of 135v RMS. However, that doesn't actually mean the power supply will be safe, since it's from a _lower voltage_ country. Your assumption would almost certainly be right if it was the other way around.
@@absalomdraconis OK, that's fair.
N-BASIC has no "CLS" (Clear screen) command.
We used "PRINT CHAR$(12);" instead of it.
I really love NEC PC-8001 and 8801 series.
Still own PC-8801 mk2 SR.
That display can be seen in the 1983 movie "WarGames". When David Lightman is in the library trying to get more information on Dr. Falken and has a chronology printed up by the librarian toward the end of that montage. You can briefly see the same model display as the printer is printing out a document.
yes! i was looking for it! do you know what's the keyboard/terminal attached to the monitor in that scene?
4MHz was pretty standard for a Z80; the different architecture means at that clock rate it runs at about the same speed as a 1MHz 6502.
TIME$ was a syntax error because BASIC doesn't like plain expressions; you have to do something with them. PRINT TIME$ would have printed out its idea of the current time of day, which could be set from some onboard real-time clock but was usually just set to midnight at power up.
Thank you, Happy to learn about the HELLORD meme, I saw it on one some of your previous videos and thought it came from a huge memory overlap bug on one of your old computers :p
Looking forward to the retro-engeneering video
Anyone who is interested in the PC-88 and beyond, I recommend Mr. Jakes’ PC-88 Paradise as a part of Basement Brothers! I wondered what made the computer tic for him, and now, thanks to this video, I understand now!
Great!
I also have two units of PC-8001 and one PC-8801 still functioning.
MZ-80K2, MZ-80B, and MZ-2000 of SHARP are also there and function.👍
amazing job! i very happy for you work
Stoked to see some NEC hardware, always had a soft spot for the gaming software that was developed on them. That expansion board is intriguing, hoping you're able to figure out what exactly it does. If the luck from the computer carries over, it might even still be working~
One of the first computers I ever used was a NEC PC9801M and it was GORGEOUS... Learn x68 Assembly with that machine... I'd love to get my hands in one of those again...
Okay that DIN plug board is genius.
I will travel to Japan this summer, I'll make a stop at "Beep" for sure!
My first printer back in the day was a NEC PC8023A. I used it in combination with an Acorn Electron. 😅Never knew until today NEC had a matching computer. Nice! Great video('s)
Aah, the ol' perfboard jank conundrum. Ive had a few ham radios with such a wonder in them, No idea what it does, but someone obviously thought it was a good idea enough to spend a few evenings crafting some bespoke wizardry. I myself have built a few things, especially when I was an electronics technician, that have gone out into the world to do their job, and come back 5 years later for service or upgrades or whatever, and I have NO IDEA what it was for. 100% sure I built it, little trademark habits and fab techniques, but cant remember at all what it was for. can usually figure it out by sifting through the server backups or back to first principals, but its a weird feeling, 'I know I made it, but what the hell for??". That is kinda the rub in a custom electronics shop, especially when you know there is a 'right way' to do something, but that takes a part with a 2 week lead time, and the customer needed it yesterday afternoon. you can get a little... creative. have fun with that.
PS, I do really enjoy your bunnies making an appearance. as an Aussie, Wabbits are a scourge and I really am only familiar with them down the scope of a rifle, and learning basic biology to prep them for cooking or cat food (and our cat psychically knew when we had been hunting, she LOOVED her some fresh rabbit, pestering us before even the truck was switched off, even having a different meow from her normal 'feed me' when wabbit involved, more excited and questioning) . I do rather love them, but thats cos Mum refused to eat them, so it was a Manly Man thing Dad n I would do, pop a few bunnies, set a fire by the river, process em down and roast over the coals with bacon and potatoes for lunch. A good lesson, where food comes from, killing, guts etc, meat does not come from a plastic box. Thanks Dad. If it was a camping trip a stew or pot roast. they also make a really decent curry, go very well with a full fat coconut cream. but the little buggers are really quite cute. if only they weren't so ecologically destructive.
This was my first computer, bought in Hong Kong around 1981. Japanese keyboard and manuals. Unfortunately all my cassette tapes have been lost: I spent hours typing in the machine code and BASIC headers for all the games on the early 80s. I still have the computer and colour monitor in storage. I’ve also got a full listing of the NEC BASIC in a limited run Japanese book of the time.
Hot damn, I can't believe those capacitors are all in such good condition and that the old dear just....*worked!* Great video as always!
They are from time before the Great Cap Rot :-)
They definitely don't make em anymore like they all used to. Old Caps seem to be made indestructibe.
Great Video! love seeing these old retro systems from my era..
I have forgotten the sleave so many times years ago, that my brain is trained to put that on first. Even watching your video, the first thing that popped into my head was "don't forget the cable restraint". 🤣
[14:00] Yes, it freaking works. (笑) And kudos on the nihongo hellorld!
[19:00] AUTO also takes a line number to start with, and an optional increment. Good ol' standard Z-80 MS-BASIC stuff.
As for bodge boards, I have my own that I put in my old TRS-80, to shift lowercase descenders down by two pixels. And it does some other stuff with the character address lines that after fully reverse-engineering it, I have no idea what it was supposed to do! (And I made it!) I tried to just run the computer to see what it did, but the TRS-80 video output uses some janky 74Cxx gates that can flake out, and mine had indeed flaked out.
That board you have is a bit simpler, and the best start at trying to figure out what it does is to find out where those blue wires go. I am so tempted to try to figure out the circuit from stills of the video, but I have to resist, I have so many other things to decipher!
While you were soldering the DIN connector I had this lingering, familiar fear that you might have missed the connector body. When you revealed that you did, I FELT it.
I've been doing electronics for like 20 years and it still happens to me. With connectors and heat shrink tubing alike.
I've been doing that for over 40 years. Some things never change... 😅
8:40 as somebody who got bored one night and went deep down the rabbit hole of searching for Japanese electric. Those are some amazing photos and video!
Haha! I just caught myself trying to find your channel back to follow up on my post and I put usagi denki by mistake...anyway, yeah you can find PC-6082 Data Recorders for like 1000 Yen still. Also, you can use the mod that I talked about along with your keitai to play WAV files and load programs at 1200 baud? On PC watch, it shows a pi zero pascom mini came out in 2019. Anyway, like your content. I really liked your 1^bit CPU stuff. At work here, I have been trying to put together a project for out students to built a 1 bit CPU with a semicondictor physics faculty and device faculty member who is retiring this year. We have been working together for about 12 years at the same place and have researched fabrication methods for junctions and devices/lithography that can be done in basically any reasonably equipped high school science lab with equipment and in a natural air environment. I would like to try an implement that kill the bits game in the lab here.
I don't know if we can do this on a PC-8001, but on a PC-6001, I was able to force the line numbers to be rewritten to 65535 using POKE so that the LIST command would not show the source code. I think that was the beginning of my career as an engineer (^_^)/
That snippet of character based R-Type is WILD :D
Yeah, that game looks awesome for being entirely character based!
Yeah, I'd too love to see more of that!!
So to not forget the connector cover, before soldering, I like to put it on the cable then tie the cable in a large knot with the cover inside the knot. That way it doesn't fall off. Get in the habit of doing that as the step right after you cut the cable.
The third chip you pointed at(the sliver and gold one) is most likely the gpu. This chip is touted as being the first ever gpu.
I had never heard of this one before but certainly, looking at the graphical capabilities, it was pretty good for the day. And the keyboard looks nice too. Very lovely. I guess it largely boils down to how it was priced and remembering that you needed a monitor as well.
The mystery perfboard looks like a real time clock... I did not see much of it, but it gave me that impression... And the button may be to adjust for 50/60 Hz power
Not likely. There is no crystal oscillator or battery on it. As for 50/60Hz, thats built into the computer already.
On second thought... D flipflops, latches... Could be a buffer... No RTC chip there... Please disclose the chip numbers of those to the right... One is almost erased and the other is blurry.
My first computer was a VIC-20, before that I had a TI-57 calculator. Since then I have owned soooooo many computers.
A deeply buried memory was unearthed. CONTINUE is a do-nothing line; it was often used as a target of GOTOs
I've had an NEC APC IV, as well as a V466 (486) and several of their monitors, and they have always...just worked!
NEC crts were legendary, always too far from my budget...
Japanese resident here. My local hardoff store has a PC-8001 in great condition that I've been eyeing off for quite a while. It's kind of on the costly side and my wife has made her feelings clear about me buying any more retro computers, however after seeing this video I might have to pull the trigger.
in regards to why it didn't sell well outside of Japan, in the 70s and early 80s it seems most of the English speaking markets prefered to either buy American computers or produce/rebrand their own. It's a similar issue to the MSX computers; they sold really well in non-English speaking markets (its seems there were more total MSX systems solds than C64s) but made little-to-no penetration in the English speaking ones. It really wasn't until the mass wave of turbo XT clones out of Taiwan, Korea and Japan flooded the markek from around 1985-1989, which massively dropped PC prices, that English speaking markets seemed to accept buying Asian made computers.
I don't know a single thing in Japanese, but hearing you read the Japanese aloud before translating was so cool. (If I wasn't already learning three languages, I might be tempted to start learning it for myself...)
No, it was my DEC LSI-11 I build! I loved the DEC 11/45. I programmed them in assembly for real-time missile, aircraft, and radar systems with lots of hardware in the loop!
Wow, I used to own one of those NEC monitors, as seen in the movie War Games. I modded mine to run from 12v. I also modded my Atari 2600 none wooden edition. To also run from 12v. I took them on holiday with me and was able to game on the move in my Uncles RV that we borrowed.
You can find some here in Brazil for about 400 dollars. I think is due to the fact that we had a huge quantity of Japanese immigrants (specially here in São Paulo) and a machine where you can write Kana is appreciated. A friend of mine had one.
Ohhh I loved when you forgot the cap of the DIN connector out. I curse so much when I do things like that, it is good to see that I am not alone.
I wonder if we went in Akihabara in the same years. I lived in Tokyo from 1990 to 1995.
(I was working in IT ) .
I brought back in France several elctric transformers for 100v-220v to keep my eletronic devices working.
なつかしい。
It sounded like he specifically went in the 2010s.
Love the 4 channel Teac Quad recorder behind you, I had one. Great recorder
Like your little test programme... My 1983 Sega SC-3000 finished the test in 1m 10sec 😁
Speaking of home / mini-computer cross-overs, it would be great to do a video about the ancestors of TMS9900, which were discrete TTL CPUs used in TI mini computers. It would be fun to see a 99-series mini computer in action!
My guess is that the small expansion board enables graphics modes on the CRTC chip that are available in the 8001A, or that changes the memory map somehow. Maybe it was used with an additional ROM chip that wasn’t populated on your board, so it doesn’t do anything when you push the button. 😢 You’d really need to see what voltages/signals are on the connector without the board plugged in. My guess is; Gnd, +5, +/-12, composite video, clock signal from the CPU, reset, and maybe h/v sync pulses, and one or two address lines so you can map in an external (cartridge, gayubus?) or internal ROM (in the unused socket). Heck, maybe it’s a parental lockout switch so it wouldn’t play game carts; that way, the children would do their homework instead. 😊
I have a TI 994A that I haven't tried troubleshooting years, you reminded me of it so I guess I need to pull it out from under my bed now that I know a little more
Probably the power supply. It uses a weird split linear / switching power supply. Multiple voltages from an external multitap transformer to a switch mode supply inside. Probably easier to rip all that and replace with a compact modern power supply.
I must have made up a 1000 connectors so far in my life. It never ends. But I get exactly what I need and its the right length. Gives me great satisfaction.
Loved hearing a bit of your backstory :-)
Cool little computer. I never got into PCs as a 80/90s kid, we had an ARM based desktop computer, an Acorn A3020, i used to consider early PCs silly as they where a massive step back. Fun fact, the later Acorn Risc Machines ( or ARM for short) could emulate a 386 faster than a 386 could run :).
The TRS-80 Model III had a couple of commands that I haven't thought of in a long while, but your use of 'auto' reminded me. The other ones are TRON and TROFF, which will print the line number being executed. Handy for finding bugs.
What a lovely little machine that is! And huge respect that it's Japanese!
It's like this channel has finally melded two of your loves! Now if only this thing were in a car...
Every time I see a computer with 5 big keys at the top of the keyboard, I think it's an MSX computer.