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PC-8801

From NEC Retro

PC8801.jpg
PC-8801
Manufacturer: NEC
Release Date RRP Code
PC-8801
JP 		¥228,000228,000

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The PC-8801 is a home and business computer released by NEC in 1981. It is a successor to the PC-8001, and was, for a short period, NEC's flagship home computer.

Hardware

PC8801 Boot.png

"How many files?", asks the computer when you turn it on.

The PC-8801 makes a number of significant improvements over the PC-8001 architecture. Rather than housing the machine within a keyboard (which would then be extended with add-on boxes), it shares a similar design with the IBM PC 5150 released some months prior, being a rectangular box that the user plugs components into. However, unlike IBM, NEC continued to ask its users to spend extra on external disk drives or cassette decks; something corrected in later revisions of the hardware.

Similarly to the PC-6001, the PC-8801 asks a question when first turned on; "how many files?", which can be used to divide up the memory, should the user require. Simply pressing enter will set the machine up with the default memory configuration and boot into the built-in N88-BASIC.

The PC-8801 pre-dates the PC-8001 mkII and PC-8001 mkII SR, so software written for those machines is incompatible. Support would never officially be added to any PC-8800 series computer.

With the release of the PC-9801 in 1982, the PC-8801 would be positioned as the mainstream, mid-range machine from NEC (with the PC-6001 taking the budget market). It would remain a popular platform in Japan until being replaced with the PC-8801 mkII SR in 1985.

Technical specifications

List of games

References



PC-8800 series hardware
PC-8801 (1981) | PC-8801 mkII (1983) | PC-8801 mkII SR (TR | FR | MR | FH | MH | FA | MA | FE | MA2 | FE2 | MC) (1985-1989) | PC-88 VA (VA2 | VA3) (1987-1988)
stuff
haven't worked it all out yet
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