NEC's Answer to the TRS-80 Model 100 - I Love this Machine!
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- Опубликовано: 5 сен 2024
- This is one of my favourite machines in my collection, the NEC PC-8201A. It's a dream come true to own a machine like this.
Image Credits Wikipedia:
4040 CPU - Thomas Nguyen
8008 CPU - Konstantin Lanzet
8080 CPU - Konstantin Lanzet
8086 CPU - Thomas Nguyen
8088 CPU - Konstantin Lanzet
8085 CPU - Konstantin Lanzet
Images cropped and resized.
creativecommon...
creativecommon...
I would have been SO HAPPY to have this thing as a child - even in the 1990's! I wanted a portable computer so badly, and my first "real" portable computer was an Amstad PPC640, which was massively larger than this thing and it required TEN "C" batteries (a week's allowance) which it chewed through in two hours!
The battery life on this seems really good. In fact the AA cells haven't run out since I got it. I reckon I would have loved it as a kid too.
I swear JC Pennys in Detroit had these in the 80's at all of their Register Islands thru out the store.
Edit half way thru:
Very Nice Spider Graph of the iNtel chip breakdown. Simple stuff like that even for 40 year old untreated ADHD computer nerds love it lol!
I found one of these BASICally unused in the box with all the stuff, it's such a cool machine!
Mine came with the NiCd pack but I converted it back to a non-charging battery caddy with some spring terminals off Amazon, and I replaced the backup battery with a CR2032 and diode.
I love the construction, it's so well made. EVERY SINGLE SCREW goes into a metal threaded insert. The wires connecting the 2 halves are perfectly sized to fold the machine in half without disconnecting them. etc..
Very well made video by the way, always fun to find new people making these kinds of videos!
Thanks for the comments. I absolutely love this machine. I really want to make a video about programming it in assembly language some time on the channel because I think it can probably go quite a bit faster with a reasonable programming effort.
@@PCRetroTech I'd love to see that!
So far Assembly on it is a mystery to me. I read you can't transfer ASM over Serial, so I'm not sure how that'd work.
I also wanted to try running Forth on it, since that's "BASIC but fast", but I've only found a version for the Tandy 100. Might try porting it for giggles but I don't have a ton of asm knowledge...
@@leisergeist Forth is a very different language, but it should be a bit faster than BASIC. It's a good way to get control of a machine, but you need to know the assembly language fairly well to write a Forth interpreter.
@@PCRetroTech Yeah, I have vague asm knowledge but not for the 8085 yet. I feel like the Model 100 version might be close enough to only have to change memory map and IO stuff. Dunno!
That’s such a beautiful specimen! I’ve always thought the NEC was a better looking design than the Tandy variant.
After all, the Italians with the Olivetti M10 got the most swanky design for sure. 😁 (Btw. It's my very first computer)
A well-made video dealing with a ( at least to me ) totally unknown/forgotten machine. You deserve more subscribers :)
Thanks!
Thanks for posting an entertaining and helpful video on the first 'personal computer' I bought (I still have mine). Even though I'd been programming on other 'personal computers' for years before this, I cut my teeth on 8085 assembler programming using this computer.
I ended-up buying database software for it... and some custom EEPROMs (it could take an extra ROM chip as well as the OS & BASIC chip)... and Dad and I even made custom overlays for it so it could be used by folks in the field for traffic statistics data collection, like turning movement counts, classification counts, etc. It was such a great unit for the time...
I still didn't get around to writing an assembly language program for it, but I look forward to it when I finally get some time.
Great review. Please consider removing that ni-cad battery because it's a timebomb waiting to spill its guts and corrode the board. A 3v CR2032 or simillar in a holder with a small diode to avoid charging works.
Yeah that's definitely happening. Don't worry!
@@PCRetroTech The battery does look to already have been replaced sometime recently. It's marked as a NiMH, but all the originals would have been NiCd. It's going to be fine for another few decades at least, and likely not a hazard at all
@@ChartreuseKitsune Thanks, that's reassuring.
I have a perfect looking one of these but unfortunately that stupid darn battery has leaked and destroyed tracks on both the main and key board. Very disappointing.
@@willgilligan7605 Oh how disappointing. Can you solder some wires back over the traces?
The 8085 is perfect for the Model 100 because all those external inputs (serial, modem, keyboard, cassette, BCR) are driven by interrupts and the 8085 has a lot of hardware interrupt pins.
Cool.
i found one at work in an old dusty cabinet.. and use it to connect to old IBM mainframe serial ports in telecom mode. =-) i likes! thanks for your review.
Oh I wish I worked somewhere that had old dusty closets with rare old computers in them! Nice find. I hope you have a lot of fun with it!
This screen is amazing. I wished this was viable and common among hobist nowadays
I had one of those things. It was actually kind of useful, like a graphing calculator or an address book.
I made a data acquisition system for a Rhesus monkey behavioral study using a Model 100. We used the barcode reader for input- the researcher had a clipboard with pre-printed barcodes for each monkey, behavior and location; so they'd watch the group and swipe the barcodes to register all the behaviors; very fast and efficient.
I wrote the software that took in the swipes and tabulated them, then downloaded the files to PC via the serial port. The only HUGE ANNOYING bug I ran into was in writing the data files; when writing a char of value 127 (ie, backspace), one byte would be deleted from the file! Such a strange bug it took me ages to figure out that nonsense. My first exposure to Microsoft software engineering lol.
Ha! Cool story. So monkey 127 had the power to "erase" other monkeys? Anyway, jokes aside, this sounds like a great use for one of these things.
@@PCRetroTech it was a really good fit for the problem; they had 20 or so monkeys, maybe a dozen behaviors, and same with locations within the enclosure. We printed up barcode sheets with a Mac they had. Having the Model 100 timetag each scan let them collect much more data much more accurately. Previously they had printed worksheets with checkboxes they picked off with a pencil, then hand-collated the sheets after an observations session; but thats lots of work.
“... a rare opportunity to take a look at one of these, working, before I lose all the screws.”
I wish I didn’t relate to that so much. 😒
What a gorgeous specimen! Thanks for making this video!
It looks like a machine, which i sold last year. The red an black stickers on System and optional ROM SARDOS are made by me :)
The machine is still going very well!
Kyocera is a portmanteau of "Kyoto Ceramics" so the first syllable is pronounced the same as in Kyoto. Cool machine!
Thanks, I didn't know this.
@@PCRetroTech No worries! I just used to live there so happened to know
Very full rounded review, keep it coming!
It's interesting that this style of portable computer is returning to some popularity in the maker world. There is a logic to having something text focused that is this portable!
What a cool little computer! Excellent video, many thanks! :D
I own a similar sized Casio FP-200 which also has an 8085 (Oki MSM80C85). It uses C85 Basic which I am guessing was written by Casio.
Very interesting. I wonder how similar the machines are.
For my Olivetti M10 a common cassette deck will do the job. It's standard DIN cable.
I am pretty sure you know already any portable cassette player will work, you just need the correct cable.
Yes, that's true. Of course I don't have the cable. I could make one, but I don't have any tapes, and actually I can't find tape images online so far.
@@PCRetroTech If you can find tape images, there are phone apps which will play back cassette images using smartphone audio. Good reason to keep the 3.5mm jack!
@@JamieBainbridge Yes, unfortunately Apple didn't see fit to keep that. But I also don't find any tape images I couldn't type in by hand in a few minutes so probably not a big issue.
The Tandy and NEC where both made by Kyocera,
Indeed it was!
I got the same model here. It's neat, but the basic dialect is really limited. Kudos for the circle drawing demo, that would've blown my mind back then.
No problem. Glad you enjoyed. Interesting that there are a few of these out there.
Thanks for your review. What was the list price back in these days?
None of the major sites for the machine that I've looked at seem to give that info. But if you track down something definitive, please let me know. I'm also curious about that.
I think both Tandy and NEC sourced this design from Kyocera.
Love those type of pocket computers from 8 bit era... at least ones with proper keyboards.
Can't imagine they would be too fun to actually work with tho
Some of the keys are in an unfamiliar place, but I started to get used to it quite quickly. I think these machines could do more than people thought.
Mine was the first terminal I used for our VAX minis (running at 300 baud).. Someone wrote a VT-100 emulator for it... & I wrote an implementation of 'Kermit' for it... all of which is long lost now :(
YT seems to have been swallowing my comments, maybe because they contained links to NEC 8201A stuff on the web. Are my comments visible to you but just need to be approved? Let me know and I can try to post them again as needed. Cheers.
I did see them. Yes, unfortunately YT deletes ALL comments with ANY links after a short time. I have no control over it whatsoever and the posts are not held for review or anything like that. However, they do go to my email. The biggest problem is that I have no way to even thank viewers who, like yourself, go to some considerable trouble to post useful information. But rest assured, I saw your post and very much appreciated it!
I'm also very curious about the option ROM. I did try the usual commands to switch option ROM, but nothing happened. It had completely escaped my notice that all the usual stuff is usually in ROM0, so now I have a mystery to solve!
TWORD, TSDOS, SARDINE. Yep, looks like the SARDOS ROM perhaps? Very cool. It's a shame I missed that for the original video, but I guess I have something else to add to my programming video for the PC-8201A!
@@PCRetroTech no worries, and glad you got my messages anyway! I'm surprised they were just silently discarded and not sent to "Held for Review". I can see one option under Comments > Settings > Community > Advanced > "Block Links", a checkbox that says "If you select this option, new comments with hashtags and URLs will be held for review." .. not sure if checking that would make a difference for future. All the best.
@@electronicsluckydip That option is selected, though I don't find it where you suggested. Somehow RUclips just seems to delete them anyway.
@@PCRetroTech "RUclips just seems to delete them anyway."
RUclips is as wise as it is beneficent - or, as I've heard it said '"Stupid and evil"
If only it could display 10 rows of text, then perhaps a sideways text-mode Tetris clone would be possible.
It could be done graphically, I am sure.
Please please please someone in the retro world build the video controller!
NEC PC-8201 is not an answer to the Tandy! This one, the Olivetti etc. were all rebadged or tweaked versions of the Kyocera original.
The 8085 is an Intel chip, perhaps you have a clone?
Yes, it is an 80C85 clone. I was surprised that it wasn't an NEC clone. After all, we know they were responsible for the V20 and V30 chips a year earlier than this machine. So they were certainly in the business of making chip clones.
although not my type of machine, pretty good video overall. you should have removed the battery and the foam tho.
Will Model 100 software run on the NEC?
They aren’t totally compatible - even BASIC programs need some Pokes changed, as far as I know. By the way there is a third sibling in the family, the Olivetti M10, which was also based on the same Kyocera platform.
sitting at 286 likes lol
0:36 Just because of 1 Australian...?
5:19 How are you going to notice that?
5:19 I don't suppose you considered the possibility it was a joke?
Great. Another "grey whale" to look for on eBay!
Dave Jones is over rated.
He clearly works hard and has a lot of electronics knowledge to share, so I'm not complaining. But he is an Australian, which means he comes up for some good-natured ribbing every now and again. :-)
Who’s rating him? On what scale? What would be a reasonable rating?
IMO, he’s a bright and enthusiastic electronics fan with professional experience, willing to share his knowledge for free to anyone who wants to watch. I’m not sure what rating that deserves, but I would assume he’s earned it.
They fell off
? you really know very little about computers ......
I'd appreciate it if you'd keep the comments section civil, thanks. Fortunately you don't seem to have put the comment in the correct place, so whoever this was aimed at didn't get the message.
@@PCRetroTech You - and it is CIVIL ! it is just that your video was like a young child first getting a computer , you didn't even look at the VARTA battery or address it as the tend to LEAK! you failed to infor as to the memory type or other simple fundamentals.... That is why I made the comment...
@@peteregan9750 You think that the reason I didn't address the things YOU personally wanted to see means that I don't know much about computers!? Umm. Have you tried asking questions in the comments?
Also, your comment about the VARTA battery indicates you didn't watch the video. I explicitly mentioned that they leak, in the video. Do you really want to see yet another montage of snipping a battery out on RUclips. Is that REALLY the most relevant thing I could show you? This video was already too long for modern RUclips. Let me know what I should have left out will you.
What did you want with regard to IC's? Did you want me to look at every single one and tell you all relevant engineering facts? Do you want me to trace the schematic while I'm at it and explain all the pins of all ICs. Maybe you'd like voltages while I'm at it?
What about programming. Did you want me to write a library of assembly language functionality for the machine? How about trying out all available programs for the machine? What about getting hold of all possible ROMS and upgrades and trying them? Should I disassemble them all too? And what about after lunch? Maybe you'd like to know about every page of all three manuals. Perhaps a list of errata? Anything else I should spend my weekend doing next week?
Did you even listen until the end of the video where I explained I'd be making another video on this machine at some point?
@@PCRetroTech "Do you really want to see yet another montage of snipping a battery out on RUclips."
Make one, filmed slo-mo with 70s porn music (doesn't even have to be for the machine in the main video, since we all know what a coin cell replacement looks like, really), and then link it in the description if someone goes the whole arsehole in the comments. :D
@@rog2224 Ah, that's why my videos have such a low view count after so many years. It's the poor choice of music. :-)