24 Aug
2010
24 Aug
'10
4:57 p.m.
On 24 Aug 2010 at 14:24, Michael Lee wrote:
I recently got my hands on a NEC Advanced Personal
Computer. From
what I read, it's a MS-DOS and CP/M capable machine. It's got dual 8"
drives and about the size of a terminal.
With that said, anyone have any more information on this system?
Anything to boot it perhaps, and of course, the unit I have didn't
come with a keyboard, and the connector appears to be some type of
centronics connector. Any suggestions on where to find such a beast?
This is an early member (coming out of NEC's Business Products Group)
of the PC98 series, circa 1982. Superb 7220-generated graphics, you
could get the displays as monochrome or color. Otherwise known (in
Japan) as the N5200.
Not at all IBM-PC compatible, again, based on the NEC PC98 standard
that at one time had most of the Japanese PC market. Well-built, but
closed architecture (the expansion is based on the "C-bus").
CP/M-86 and MS-DOS are both available (I have disks for both). The
disk format is basically 8 sectors of 1024 bytes on 2 sides of 77
tracks. This same format was repeated in 5.25" and 3.5" formats;
that is, the format doesn't change with the physical media size. The
3.5" drives spin at 360 RPM, the same as the 5.25" and 8" ones.
You'll sometimes see the version of MS-DOS for the PC98 systems
referred to as "DOS-V".
Can't help you with the keyboard, however.
--Chuck