Posts tagged "NEC PC-6001 series"

A home 8-bit computer series made by NEC after the success of the PC-8001.

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Why, you three-bit machine...

My NEC PC-6601SR “Mr.PC” has been a nearly permanent resident of my desk ever since it was repaired. This beautiful red computer works okay with a regular old VGA LCD monitor. So why did I pay a fortune to import a CRT monitor from Japan? There are two reasons. For one, it is the NEC PC-TV151 monitor that’s supposed to go with this computer. Also, it’s broken.

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Becoming Mr.PC's Type

Like the Sharp X1turbo, the Mr.PC is also not very usable without a keyboard. It’s yet another way in which NEC copied Sharp.

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That name again is Mr.PC

Get ready to step into the cyberpunk future of the mid-late 1980s, and don’t forget to bring your boxed wine. NEC pulled out all the stops on this, their final PC-6001 computer. I have to pull out even more stops to get the disk drive to work.

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Hearing the PC-6001 out

When I first set up the PC-6001, I had to bring it back to life by replacing the shorted tantalum capacitors on the motherboard’s power rails. It’s such a great little machine! After some more testing, however, it became obvious that I was getting no sound out of the poor little thing.

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Cleaning the keyboard on the PC-6001

When I first fixed the PC-6001, there were a few sticky keys on the keyboard. “H,” Left Shift, and - most importantly - Return were all bad to a certain extent. I could limp along with Ctrl-M for a little while to replace Return, but it was pretty awkward. How hard can it be to clean the keyboard?

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PC-6001mkII, or, sometimes the sequel is better

My PC-6001 came cheap because it was untested (and it did end up needing capacitor replacement), but the PC-6001mkII seems like it has always changed hands for a lot of money in Japanese collector circles, at least for as long as I’ve been paying attention to the prices. When I landed one for a great deal, I figured that there must be something wrong with it.

thumbnail for "The circle of life - an NEC PC-6001 arrives, breaks, is fixed"

The circle of life - an NEC PC-6001 arrives, breaks, is fixed

Sure, I’ve got NEC PC-88s, I’ve got NEC PC-98s, but didn’t NEC make anything that was a little friendlier to the home user? By now, you should know better than to doubt our friends at the Electric Company. The NEC PC-6001 has a thriving homebrew scene around it in Japan to this very day, and is still fondly remembered. Let’s rip one open and stuff it with hot molten lead.

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