NEC PC-88 & PC-98 Story - Also, Let's Restore A PC-9821!

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The PC-9821 is one of the later models in the now-legendary NEC PC-98 range of computers. In this video I restore this quirky Japanese machine while learning all about its history and how it relates to the iconic PC-88, and how both computers spawned a whole industry of home computer gaming in their homeland of Japan thanks to their advanced graphics and sound capabilities.
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Chapters:
00:00 A Trashed Computer Arrives From Japan
00:39 NEC PC-8001, PC-6001 & PC-88 Story
04:18 NEC PC-98 Story
07:48 PC-9821 Restoration - The Teardown
10:33 What's Inside The NEC PC-9821Cu13?
19:13 Restoration Continued - More Repairs, Testing & Reassembly
24:15 Exploring The HDD For Secrets
25:39 The PC-FXGA Graphics Accelerator Board
26:33 I Need Your Help!
Royalty-Free Music From Epidemic Sound: www.epidemicsound.com:
Intro: Jobii - 368
Cornelio - Feriado
Laurence Lee Murphy - Drive By
Smartface - Bear Hats
SLCT - U & Me
The New Fools - Lost In The Right Direction
Lonov - Dusk Runner
Dusty Decks - Grainy Days
Martin Klem - From Luna To Mars
Jules Gaia - Two Steps Back
ELFL - Arcade Romance
Outro: Yomoti - Before Chill

[@ctrlaltrees]

Hello! Your eyes do not deceive you - this is a reupload of a previous video. The last one contained a couple of errors, and I didn't want to let it stand as-is as accuracy is very important to me. I explain this on video better than I ever could in a comment, so here's the info: kzbin.info/www/bejne/kJK8g3yOidKDeas Again, I wanted to give a big shoutout to the Basement Brothers for providing the PC-98 gameplay footage used here. They've done some excellent (and hilarious) reviews of PC-88 and PC-98 games on original hardware so if you're interested in what makes these machines special they're well worth a watch: www.youtube.com/@BasementBrothers

[@mikepartin571]

Silicon heaven! That's where all the calculators go!

[@BasementBrothers]

Thanks for the shoutout, and I am looking forward to future videos on your progress with this machine. Hopefully you'll have some games running in no time!

[@ctrlaltrees]

You're very welcome - and thankyou for all of your help! I couldn't have done it without you.

[@darkerson]

I was a little slow to comment, but you were the first person I thought of to suggest for help. Love your channel and content by the way!!

[@DosGamerMan]

Watched it again, and I would say nice little extra IBM advert insert added in, windows 95 mention gone i think. I look forward to follow ups on this.

[@ctrlaltrees]

Aww, there really was no need but I do appreciate it. Glad to have the correct information out there once and for all. The IBM ad certainly was an inspired choice to cover up one of my more complex edits! 😁

[@Elrinth]

The first graphics card to use the chip was Orchid Technology's Righteous 3D, released on October 7, 1996. My big brother had one of those, before we bought the Voodoo 2 12MB. I could not find any dates on the PC-FXGA , however wikidata says: 8 December 1995. I found a reciept inside my PC-FXGA showing it was bought on 1998-01-11.

[@ctrlaltrees]

Interesting to know, thanks! It's certainly difficult to track down information on this obscure Japanese stuff, especially from 30 years ago.

[@DaveVelociraptor]

Do you ever get deja vu?

[@ctrlaltrees]

I'm seeing double - *four* PC-9821s!

[@MQsto]

I did. Once.

[@sanityormadness]

Well, it probably is deja vu. It sounds like it.

[@dairedarcy1130]

Yes, I will

[@lionvillelion]

software: first 5 Touhou Project games were developed for PC-98

[@finnisnotafish]

a whole lot of old eroge will work on there too. not that theyre appropriate enough for youtube, though haha!

[@TheRealCheesemaker]

You saved the cute baby animal(photo)s, thank you.❤

[@bikeforever2016]

Well i enjoyed it enough to watch the re-edit 😁

[@ctrlaltrees]

Thanks so much! Now with at least 60% less misinformation 😅

[@T.O.A.D.U.K]

Does anyone else watch this stuff and just look on in awe that someone can fix it?

[@ctrlaltrees]

Aww, that's very kind. I'm no Adrian Black but I do like to tinker.

[@T.O.A.D.U.K]

@@ctrlaltrees well to someone like me it is impressive. I wouldn't even know where to start. Thanks for replying.

[@ziyyigotipyigo6833]

22:44 cat

[@ctrlaltrees]

🐱

[@winstonsmith478]

TWO MONTH journey?!

[@bsthadrudge5752]

I need one of these for a project...now... anotha one lol

[@RetroSegaDev]

Great watch (again) 😁 It does lack the meat of your Ramble channel tho!

[@ctrlaltrees]

Agreed, definitely needs more meat!

[@harcalion]

Nice video(s)! I have been adding some comments with URLs (crazy, I know) and KZbin have been taking them down relentlessly. So, in summary: in the manual for Roland UM-4 all the diagrams depict this same model; I investigated a bit and it seems some classic Roland synths had NEC chips. Also, I am trying to find some PC-98 original games to play them through DosBOX-X. Sorry NEC, this is too close to a PC to merit collecting the machine (at least in my case).

[@ctrlaltrees]

Sorry to hear that, their spam filter is pretty aggressive at times. Feel free to email me on [e-mail], a few people have and it's all appreciated. 😁

[@harcalion]

@@ctrlaltrees, I have sent you an email with some rambling and links, hope you find it interesting!

[@relo999]

I love the PC98, but man is it poorly documented just like other Japanese computer. Finding games to play for it is rather hard outside of small lists of "greatest hits", Japanese people seems to not be keen on documenting anything. A larger chunk of the library can't be found online and it's not remotely hard to see software on yahoo that hasn't been ripped an put online. Repairs and modification are also poorly documented beyond the bare basics (and that's an issue with most Japanese only systems, so often I see blogs in Japanese go "look what cool thing I did" or "look I found how to fix this issue that's undocumented how to fix" and then not document anything). For example my recent annoyance with the Japanese computer scene, I got a X68000 without a PSU. Building a new PSU for it isn't that hard seeing as they use standard voltages but even the power pinout is poorly documented except for english sources. But then my system only has 1MB RAM, just enough to run some early games basically. However to upgrade the RAM the system first needs to get an additional 1MB RAM on a special connector (and then you can upgrade it further with an upgrade card), it's a extremely common issue with early models and something you'd expect there being some readily available aftermarket solution for. Nope. The options are either hunt down a old ram upgrade that's half the price of a new system for the last month or attempt to buy one developed by Japanese hobbyist, all of which have a different board design which means they independently designed the boards. Cool you'd think, but noooo. They all only sell once in a blue moon a hand full of boards, if you contact when they will sell again they'll give you one of 3 answers. Either they quit making them and not planning on ever doing it again, say they will make them at some unidentified point in the future or to buy one from their competitors. You'd expect that at least some guy that quit making them put their design online, they even react to questions of that nature on their blogs with "I'll probably do that in the future" only to visit those pages years later and still nothing has been released and when you ask if they're willing to share so you can make one for yourself they'll say they will at some point in the future. The great irony is that it's easier to recreate the original ram upgrade as the circuit and components are in the X68000 manual than getting Japanese developers to speak on how they make their modern versions. Japanese people in the Japanese computer scene are really nice and quite helpful but at the same time they're treating even the simplest information as some forbidden arcane knowledge unable to be spoken without invoking some ancient curse. Contrast that to Soviet computer scene, they'll hand you full PCB designs and excessive (relatively) modern tools to troubleshoot the most minor issues, go in full detail on the most minor quirks of components and systems and help you fix them and will happily aid you in repairs for literal months on end and teach you as much as possible. I have a real love hate relationship with the Japanese computer scene and by extension Japanese computers. (sorry needed to vent) Also side note, the PC98 and 88 is famously hard to emulate due to lack of decent emulator development.

[@thepirategamerboy12]

@@relo999 As far as finding games goes, there's a pretty big Neo Kobe PC-98 software archive on the Internet Archive. It's not everything but a good chunk of stuff, the only thing is that all the games are in disk images and you have to extract them yourself from the images to get them onto a real PC-98 and run them from the HDD. I do agree that finding stuff not in that archive can be quite annoying, there's really good ports of Mr. Do and Jump Bug, along with ports of Western PC games such as Descent and Lost Eden that you can't find online at all. There's also a PC-98 port of System Shock fyi that just got a working dump I think less than half a year ago. About PC-98 being hard to emulate though, Neko Project II has done quite a good job for years.

[@MrAlan1828]

I got one too, mine is a PC9821Cu16 Pentium 166? Its called a CanBe :) I also got a remote with it to watch TV and svideo input

[@ctrlaltrees]

Indeed, the "CanBe" range - because it "can be" anything, according to the marketing. Sadly no remote with mine though, I'll have to see if I can track one down.

[@Alianger]

I've noticed that Puyo Puyo 2 and Rance 4.1 display more colors than usual (around 60 / 100+ respectively) while pretty much all other games from around 1990 onwards only show 16, and older games show 8. Do you have any info on that?

[@thepirategamerboy12]

The PC-9821 added built-in 256 color graphics that the 9801 didn't have. It can do that at 640x400 24khz or 640x480 31khz like a PC. SimCity 2000 shown briefly in the second video uses the 640x480 mode for example.

[@Alianger]

@@thepirategamerboy12 I suppose they are 9821 games then even if the boxes or online databases don't mention it. Basement brothers commented on that earlier. Thanks!

[@thepirategamerboy12]

Hi, don't want to annoy you about so I'll only mention it here this once, but I'm just double checking you got the drive image and other stuff I sent via email yesterday.

[@Sozzled39]

Now I want an orangery.

[@ctrlaltrees]

Where else would you grow your oranges?

[@cmdrarcturus8197]

Somehow, I missed the first airing of this one... I was enthralled... watched it all the way through. I am not familiar with the NEC PC-98 line of machines, but I would venture to guess that the mystery backwards "PCI" slot may actually be an ACR slot. The off-set mounting of it compared to the other PCI slots kind of hints at it. ACR cards were largely proprietary; I'm aware that motherboard companies, ChainTech in particular, used them a lot during the 2002-2005 era.

[@ctrlaltrees]

I hadn't come across this before (or maybe I have and just didn't know the name) but it looks like you may be on to something here! Thanks so much for the suggestion. I have some more learning to do. 😁

[@rigues]

IIRC, the PC-FX had no 3D capability (that was its main weakness against the Saturn and PlayStation), so that board wouldn't work as a 3D Accelerator.

[@BasementBrothers]

Actually, the PC-FXGA had 3D capabilities that were not included in the actual PC-FX console, so he is not wrong. Weird, I know, but true.

[@paul_boddie]

One note about the 3D accelerator chronology is that SGI's IrisVision pre-dates 3dfx's 3D cards (and probably S3's, too). 3dfx was founded by people from Pellucid which was a spin-out of SGI around the IrisVision technology.

[@ctrlaltrees]

I should have known that SGI would have done it first. Thanks for the info 👍

[@Sorbus79]

What did you think of sunbrighting?

[@ctrlaltrees]

Ah yes, I probably should have talked about this in the video. It certainly lightened the whole machine up a few shades and evened out the uneven yellowing from the privacy screen, so all in all a big success. But it did take weeks! So far no obvious signs of re-yellowing, I'll certainly be trying sunbrighting again in future.

[@Iji_aya]

The NEC PC-9821 run Doom?

[@thepirategamerboy12]

Actually yes, it can.

[@JesterEric]

I think there is a model with PowerVR 3D graphics. Those chips were manufactured by NEC

[@LavaCreeperPeople]

Ok

[@g4z-kb7ct]

You should make a proper effort to dump the bios and any other roms and stick them up on archiveorg together with high quality pics of all the boards. Then when that thing dies (rom bit rot is a thing) you'll be able to use that backup to repair it and/or access it via emulation. Don't make the mistake like most clueless noobs and assume it is invincible and will last forever.

[@ctrlaltrees]

Sounds like a good idea. These things certainly aren't very well documented and the software is difficult to track down. I'll put together a package as the series goes on with the aim of uploading it to Archive.org, as I have done in the past (ie the S3 ViRGE stuff).

[@MrAlan1828]

Pentium MMX started at 166mmx in 1996

[@MarkTheMorose]

True, but there was a Mobile P133 MMX for laptops.

[@MrAlan1828]

@@MarkTheMorose Pentium 166 (1993) Pentium 166MMX (1996) Mobile Pentium 133mmx (2022). We are talking about its purpose for the PC9821 so putting in a future cpu into a Retro PC98 serves what purpose?

[@MarkTheMorose]

@@MrAlan1828 All your base are belong to us.

[@actuallyusingmyrealnameher5061]

Ahem, reliked

[@winstonsmith478]

On your potential 230/120VAC issues, while stationed at RAF Mildenhall and living in beautiful Bury St. Edmunds, I like many other yanks living off-base used step-down transformers to power our 120VAC hardware. You should be able to get cheap, used ones as yanks leave the UK since they will have no use for them in the states. I gave one of mine to my next-door neighbor to use with my 1040stf and color monitor which I gave to them for their kids. By then, I had converted over to an Am386DX40 PC which I had built.

[@atariforever2002]

The fact that you consider someone having pictures, tasteful pictures mind you, of pretty women on their computer, could somehow be construed as being a weirdo, just goes to show the sad state of our society. The rest of your video however was entertaining to watch.