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PC-8801

From NEC Retro

Revision as of 12:21, 11 February 2022 by Black Squirrel (talk | contribs) (→‎Hardware)
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.

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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