Another NEC APCIII question.

The APC III was not IBM compatible at all in it's original form. It had a special version of DOS and the floppy drives are _Quad_ density not double density. When NEC later saw the error of their ways, they offered a special card called an SLE that when installed allowed the machine to run standard IBM compatible software. This came with another version of DOS, which I think was also specific to this machine for booting purposes. SLE stood for Software Library Extender. I think the special card had it's own 8088 cpu. APC III's were heavily marketed here in Australia and were once very easy to find. I have a number in deep storage (ie too deep to get out and look at easily). NEC also provided financial incentives for software developers here and I have come across several cases of startup companies built on these incentives, all now gone though. I think NEC learned about compatibility the hard way. To get your machine going the first question is whether you have the SLE card or not. The second question is whether you have the correct monitor. I don't think normal IBM style monitors will work. Hans Olminkhof -----Original Message----- From: Jason Willgruber <roblwill(a)usaor.net> To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers <classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu> Date: Friday, 26 February 1999 13:36 Subject: Another NEC APCIII question.