Leaded Solder
Posts
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The last ride of PC88 colour video
After a respin of the PC88 colour video board, the PC8801mkII now has excellent digital colour video out.
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Apple IIe keyboard repair attempt
I’ve had my Apple IIe for a few months now, and it’s been great. One of the things that’s kept it from getting more use has been the spotty “I” key, which the seller warned me about.
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The PC98 can remember lots of things
Just as I was beginning to lose hope that the hard drive I had ordered back in August from Yahoo Auctions Japan would ever arrive, my doorbell rang. Inside a beat-up but functional Suruga-ya box sat the hard drive, done with its international journey.
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Exploring the PC98 software catalogue
Now that the PC98 can load software off of a USB stick instead of floppies, I decided to explore the software catalogue a bit.
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A mystical journey to PC8801mkII colour video
I’ve been using the monochrome video cable on my PC88 ever since I built it. Colour video was a little more complicated, so I ended up designing a bunch of adapters to try and get it to work. I’m happy to announce that one of those adapters has finally worked!
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PC98 - New floppy board, sound 'fixed,' more testing
Now that the PC98 can load a game off a flash drive, there’s a lot more parts of it I can test. Today, I spent a few minutes putting together a new revision of the floppy board and inspecting the computer.
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Floppy adapter board works for the PC98!
After I designed the first version of my PC88 floppy board, I thought it would be fun to put one together for the PC98 as well. Why do I need an adapter for a computer that already has 3.5” floppy drives? The PC9821AP2 I own has a 26-pin floppy drive connector, like a mid-90s laptop, and most standard IBM PC style floppy drives have 34.
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Revenge of the PC-8801mkII floppy adapter board
In the last entry, I found myself with a working adapter board to allow a 3.5” floppy drive (like a Gotek) to work with the NEC PC8801mkII. This liberated me from having to source, organize and maintain 5.25” floppy disks, and opens a large library of software for this computer without having to hunt through the used market. However, like all good things, there were a lot of bugs with the old adapter.
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PC-8801mkII floppy adapter board
I wanted to get a Gotek working on my PC88, and after seeing that there were a lot of Japanese hobbyists who had managed to get an HxC floppy emulator working, decided it must be possible - even if not simple.
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SGI Octane runs again
Many years ago, I grabbed an SGI Octane off eBay from a junk dealer. They didn’t pack it well, so the machine arrived beat up and stuffed full of styrofoam fragments from the packing material it had shredded on the way. After a few attempts to lug the machine around in the small condo I had at the time, I gave up and just let it slowly be re-absorbed into the pile of non-working computers.
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PC-8801mkII battery removal
I delved into the depths of my trusty Showa-era NEC to remove its leaking (leaked?) battery. Here’s what I found.
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Mini-updates - PC-8801, PC-9821, Macintosh LC520
Going to try a new format for this entry; there are some small updates to keep a record of, but nothing deserving of a full entry on their own.
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PC-8801mkII monochrome video works
In the last entry, we left our intrepid hero with no video out. After a quick consultation of the Japanese internet, and a not-so-quick cable soldering job later, we now have black and white video and can use N88 BASIC (at least in theory).
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The PC8801mkII gets inspected
While the PC9821 has horsepower and 90s clone styling for days, the real reason I spent all this effort and money was to get personal with the PC8801 platform. This humble little NEC home computer platform launched an indie game development revolution - well, or at least it did after this one was made. In fact, this 8801mkII, having been released immediately before the gaming-friendly 8801mkIISR, is only really useful to someone super weird who wants to learn about its guts on the cheap. I don’t know anyone like that around here, so I might as well do it. You’re welcome, future historians.
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PC-9821AP2/U8W - day two
I only had a short amount of time to play with the computer today, but thanks to a very knowledgable friend, I got a known-good DOS 6.2 image with some disk utilities written to a floppy and booted.
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