[HN Gopher] When is a PC not a PC? The PC-98
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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:.
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