[HN Gopher] When is a PC not a PC? The PC-98 ___________________________________________________________________ When is a PC not a PC? The PC-98 Author : zdw Score : 83 points Date : 2023-01-07 18:54 UTC (1 days ago) (HTM) web link (scalibq.wordpress.com) (TXT) w3m dump (scalibq.wordpress.com) | markus_zhang wrote: | PC-88 and PC-98 have a large collection of erotic games with the | best pixel arts. The games are fun too if you can read Japanese | or someone kindly provided a translationed version. | userbinator wrote: | Of course. Because Japan. | bitwize wrote: | I had a non-PC PC -- a Tandy 2000. It was the first machine I | ever programmed Lisp on. | | There were lots of these back in the day -- systems with x86 | processors that attempted to fill the PC's niche and even ran DOS | but were subtly incompatible. In the early 80s the IBM PC was not | the clear winner yet, and the BIOS hadn't been reverse- | engineered, so there were attempts to come up with similar, but | not quite compatible, designs to compete in the same market. By | the release of the PC/AT, the IBM architecture was pretty much | unstoppable in its dominance. | | The Japanese PC-incompatibles, like the NEC PC-88 and PC-98 | series, hung on for a bit longer for a couple of reasons: | | 1) as explained in the article, displaying Japanese hiragana, | katakana, and kanji had high resolution requirements that none of | the standard IBM graphics adapters could really match until about | the time VGA came out, and there was poor support in MS-DOS until | the late 80s or so | | 2) the Japanese _liked_ their special, idiosyncratic, very | Japanese computer designs. | | To the latter, there was an episode of _Pretty Samy_ (a _Tenchi | Muyo_ spin off and magical girl parody) in which the villain was | Biff Standard, a glasses-wearing software magnate who wanted to | standardize all the world 's software. Obviously he was supposed | to be Bill Gates, and there was a rising tide of anti-Microsoft | sentiment at the time in the West as well... but the episode came | out shortly after the release of Windows 95, the first consumer | version of Windows to natively support Unicode and international | encodings without a special build. After Windows 95 came out in | Japan, there was much less of a need for products like the PC-98, | and Japanese software _could_ standardize on a plain PC | architecture running Windows. Computer enthusiasts at the time | felt the malaise of the closing of an era. | | Even to this day, when you go PC shopping in Japan, you will find | there is a hierarchy of preference among brands. Japanese | retailers will promote the Japanese brands (e.g., Sony (now | Vaio), Fujitsu, Panasonic, NEC) most prominently, followed by the | non-Japanese Asian brands (Lenovo, Samsung) and finally the | Western brands (HP, Dell). Apple gets a special pass because it's | pretty much the Louis Vuitton of electronics. | Laforet wrote: | Wait, was Pretty Sammy actually a parody of its genre? Granted | I have not seen it again on more than 20 years, but I have | always remembered it as a magical girl show played straight. | fredoralive wrote: | Windows 95 doesn't support Unicode, it only supported the | "ANSI" versions of Win32 functions, so you still had a special | Japanese version of Windows. It's NT that was Unicode from the | start. | Laforet wrote: | Windows 95 did have some limited support for Unicode. However | the vast majority of code were written with a particular code | page in mind. | | https://unicodebook.readthedocs.io/operating_systems.html | | Resident programs that transcoded character sets on the fly | were a flourishing business back then and is still | occasionally required to run some older binaries. | anthk wrote: | W95 and W98 had an Unicode addon. | kitsunesoba wrote: | > Apple gets a special pass because it's pretty much the Louis | Vuitton of electronics. | | Based on my observations, in the 90s and early 00s before Apple | had become more of a lifestyle/fashion-oriented brand, in Japan | there was a small but enthusiastic fanbase. There were a few | models of Mac that were sold only or mostly in Japan, and when | I was roaming the web in search of Mac software and tweaks back | in the late 90s I remember encountering Japanese websites at a | greater frequency than I did non-English sites of any other | language (if I recall, French was the runner-up). | | That said I've not had much of this corroborated by anybody who | lived in Japan during that timespan so I don't have a full | picture. When I lived there in the early 10s I did see a number | of old (10+ years) Macs in use in places like reception desks | though. | bitwize wrote: | My observations are based on when I went in 2011, by which | point Apple was beginning to establish itself as a fashion | brand. | | Apple computers did attract a small enthusiastic user base in | Japan before it became a fashion brand -- and again, the | traces of this are visible in anime as well! In _Pretty Samy_ | , the OS Tenchi and his friends prefer is called "Pineapple | Mach 8", in reference to Mac OS 8. In the psychological | thriller _Perfect Blue_ , main character Mima is seen being | shown how to use a Mac to get online by her manager, Rumi. | And my favorite example: one of the books seen on Noriko's | shelf in the first episode of _Gunbuster_ is called "Wozniak | talks about the Mac". | | The Amiga, by contrast, was almost invisible to the Japanese | as far as I can tell. One exception was Fumito Ueda, an Amiga | fan who would go on to develop games like _Ico_ and _Shadow | of the Colossus_ for Sony. Perhaps that is why his games have | that haunting aesthetic quality, similar to Amiga favorites | like _Another World_ and _Shadow of the Beast_. | daneel_w wrote: | While barely known in Europe or the Americas, these were | incredibly popular home computers in Japan. There's an endless | amount of unique, interesting and curious games for them. | robotnikman wrote: | IIRC the first Touhou games were on PC-98 | Zababa wrote: | The first five yes. The first Touhou to be released on | Windows was Touhou 6. | rayrag wrote: | There's a twitter account that showcases PC-98 games, some | games have really beautiful pixel art. This person also wrote a | guide to PC-98 emulation. | | https://twitter.com/PC98_bot | | https://gang-fight.com/projects/98faq/ | warning26 wrote: | PC-98 music also has a very distinctive sound that's worth a | listen: | | https://youtu.be/EJ_k_QdlNYE | johnwalkr wrote: | There's a store in Akihabara, Tokyo that has PC-98 stuff always | has a game or two running on display. Very cool to see/hear in | person. | qiqitori wrote: | Probably BEEP. (https://www.akihabara-beep.com/) | unixhero wrote: | Ssssh!!!! It is a well guarded secret that store. | CharlesW wrote: | This reminds me of QuickTime's MIDI synth. I wonder if it also | used Roland's sound set? | daneel_w wrote: | It's a programmable synthesizer. You can of course implement | the MT-32 instrument line-up with it. | klodolph wrote: | You can see that the channels are labeled YM2608, which is | one of the many four-operator FM chips from Yamaha used in | consoles and PCs (like the Genesis and AdLib). | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamaha_YM2608 | | Like the IBM-compatible PCs, the PC-98 series was available | with various different sound options. | mrighele wrote: | Very nice. At least a couple of those songs reminds me of the | style of the music in Outrun | klodolph wrote: | Well, it would naturally do that, because the Outrun genre is | named after the Out Run game... which, like the PC-98 series, | was made in Japan during the 1980s and with Yamaha 4-operator | FM synth chips. Out Run was ported to the PC-88. | mrighele wrote: | yes I was thinking about the arcade game Out Run. I checked | earlier and while both PC-98 and the arcade hardware used | both Yamaha chips, they were different models | klodolph wrote: | The FM sounds from the various Yamaha FM four-op chips | are more or less the same, the main differences between | the chips are things additional features, PSG channels, | and ADPCM. | bhattid wrote: | Also Touhou: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GsZuS- | vyM4&list=PL0A503B6DA... | emodendroket wrote: | PC-88 and PC-98 gaming is a fascinating if somewhat impenetrable | world. | deaddodo wrote: | Well, for the same reason the X68000 and FM Towns are hard to | get into. These machines were unapologetically Japanese and | only tangentially related to the architectures of the West; | being informed by (and informing them), but never being quite | in the same place. | | That being said, toying around with each's variant of BASIC or | Windows is always fascinating. | 13of40 wrote: | I had a similar machine when I was in highschool - a Texas | Instruments Professional Computer. It had the same basic form | factor and build quality as an IBM 5150 PC, an ISA bus, and MSDOS | 1 and 2 (so int 21 worked), but the BIOS was incompatible. That | was always a bit of a head scratcher to me, since even if the | hardware ports and video memory were laid out differently, you | could still make the BIOS interrupts compatible. | analog31 wrote: | Likewise, I had a Sanyo MBC550 computer, which came with its | own MS-DOS, but would not run some (most) IBM PC software. | | Software that bypassed the "official" API, typically for the | sake of speed gains, easily became tied down to the IBM PC | memory map. Thankfully, there were separate versions of some | apps that ran on generic MS-DOS, including the original Turbo | Pascal, and Word Perfect, so the computer got me all the way | through college. | | Why did I choose the Sanyo, you ask? I was able to get a | complete computing system, with display, printer, and "bundled" | software, for under US $1000. | thought_alarm wrote: | The TI-PC was released around the same time that Compaq was | ushering in the era of the 100%-compatible PC clone. | | Compaq, of course, created the first 100% compatible clean-room | implementation of the BIOS, modified MS-DOS to work with it, | ran an extensive compatibility lab to ensure existing PC | software worked correctly with their BIOS/MS-DOS combo, and | gave their changes back to Mircosoft to encourage the growth of | a standardized platform. | | Unsurprisingly, Compaq was founded by ex-TI engineers who | became disillusioned with the TI's management. | UncleSlacky wrote: | I recall TI Professional PCs were repurposed as terminals in | the TI factory in Bedford (UK) as late as 1991, and I'd guess | other TI sites were also using them for the same purpose at | that time. | djur wrote: | I was curious about why it would have been PC incompatible, so | I did some searching. Didn't find any answers, but Wikipedia | led me to this incredibly detailed contemporary review in Byte | magazine: | | https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1983-12/page/n287/... | | I enjoyed reading it. At one point the reviewer dials in to The | Source (an early competitor to CompuServe) to download a BASIC | program. The ads are great, too. | 13of40 wrote: | If I could have had that interrupt list and memory map | (tables 1 & 2) when I was 16, that would have been a game | changer. As it was, the machine was already obsolete when we | thrift-stored it, so there was no way to get software or | manuals besides what came with it. I still did a fair amount | of BASIC and DOS-level assembly programming on it, but the | hardware and BIOS was a black box. | JohnTHaller wrote: | Modern Vintage Gamer did a short video about retro gaming on the | platform a few years ago: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlOkCgGLvZc | [deleted] | virgulino wrote: | New for me, a Japanese line of PCs. From the title I thought it | was about the PC System Design Guide PC-98: | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_System_Design_Guide | [deleted] | skissane wrote: | Closest I ever got to Japanese computers was using an IBM JX in | primary school. That's a variant of the IBM PCjr - the biggest | difference is, unlike the PCjr, it had a proper keyboard, and by | default 3.5-inch floppies rather than 5.25-inch. It was primarily | sold in Japan - but also to schools in Australia and New Zealand. | The Australia/NZ model was missing the extra memory and Kanji- | specific display hardware that the Japanese model came with. | http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2021/03/ibm-jx-ibm-pcjr-... | | One other (even bigger) way in which Japanese computer technology | influenced Australia, was that Fujitsu had a lot of success | selling their clone IBM mainframes here in the 1980s/1990s. The | university I went to - and later became staff member at - had | used one. By the time I joined the staff, it had already been | thrown out, but I remember discovering all this evidence of its | past existence left behind - masses of tangled bus and tag cables | under the data centre floor tiles, a storeroom full of 9 track | backup tapes, etc. | | Fujitsu's mainframes mostly didn't run MVS (although they could), | they ran OSIV/MSP, Fujitsu's "clone" of MVS with significantly | reduced licensing costs. However, the reason why it was cheaper, | is it wasn't actually a clone - Fujitsu had illegally stolen the | source code to MVS from IBM. They tried to cover it up by doing | things like changing the copyright notices (apparently they | forgot a few though), and they also renamed a lot of the OS | modules and commands - the modules of MVS' timesharing component, | TSO, mostly start with the prefix IKJ, Fujitsu renamed them all | to start with PDE instead; they renamed the IBM catalog | management utility, IDCAMS, to KQCAMS; etc-which meant most MVS | software could work, but only after a bunch of search-and-replace | changes to its code. IBM saw right past this feeble cover-up | attempt, and Fujitsu (and Hitachi too, which did the same | independently) ended up paying IBM many hundreds of millions of | dollars to settle the resulting lawsuits. That was likely one of | the factors resulting in Fujitsu pulling out of the mainframe | market in Australia, and most of its customers either went to | non-mainframe platforms (UNIX/Windows/Linux), or else to IBM's | mainframe operating systems (MVS / OS/390 / z/OS). Fujitsu's | mainframe OS and hardware still survive in Japan, but are stuck | on 31-bit - they never made the investment which IBM did to add | 64-bit support (with the release of z/OS in 2001). | macintux wrote: | Tangential, but I'd forgotten until this piece: I worked for a | desktop publishing company in the late 80s that naturally ran on | Macs. The owners decided they should find out what PCs could do | so they ordered one and had me buy a copy of DOS. | | After much frustration we discovered that we had PC-DOS but | needed MS-DOS (or vice versa). | | As far as I know no one got much further than installing the OS; | the system seemed dramatically inferior at the time. | tcbawo wrote: | I suppose inferior depends on what purposes they are used for. | Was it worth discarding a very large potential market? Even in | 1987, IBM PCs (and compatibles) had ~66% of market share, with | Apple ~10%. By 1990, PCs had >80% of the market. | rasz wrote: | In 1987 C64 had 4x the market share of Macs :) | | https://web.archive.org/web/20150609094756/http://www.retroc. | .. | KerrAvon wrote: | I think one needs to take any assertion of Commodore's | marketshare numbers with a grain of salt -- Commodore | itself didn't release numbers at the time and the numbers | we hear these days all seem to be anecdotal. | | That said, I don't think Macs surpassed Apple II | marketshare until circa 1991 or so, so one doesn't need to | look to competitors. | rollcat wrote: | I first stumbled upon this many years ago, when checking out the | list of architecture supported by FreeBSD. It served me as a | reminder, that computers are just like life forms: even if we | expect to find DNA, carbon, sugar, proteins, cell membranes, | nuclei, etc there will always be some crazy oddities that will | break some rules and surprise us - and were here, living next to | us, all along. | | http://internat.freebsd.org/platforms/pc98/ | tzs wrote: | The biggest snag I remember when it came to running DOS software | from companies that were not aware of the PC-98 was drive | lettering. | | On PC-98 your boot drive was A: followed by your other drives of | the same type and then your other drives of different types. | | Let's say you had 2 floppies and 1 hard drive, and booted from | the hard drive. The hard drive would be A: and the floppies would | be B: and C:. If you booted from floppy the boot floppy drive | would be A: and the other floppy B: and the hard drive would be | C:. | | A lot of DOS software that needed to find a hard drive would | start its search at C:. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-01-08 23:00 UTC)