Another NEC APCIII question. - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

26 Feb 1999

...
 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.
 Not at all???  It's got an AMD 8086 and a Intel 8087 directly on the
motherboard.

About the only thing that I can see that is non-standard is the bus
archetecture.  It's got a standard (looking) floppy, and an MFM (or RLL) HD.

...
 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.

It's got either an CGA or EGA (made by NEC) on it.  It works on an old Tandy
1000, so, I'd say the monitor is standard.
--
                 -Jason Willgruber
               (roblwill(a)usaor.net)
                  ICQ#: 1730318
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