ENG 日本語
八　ビ　ッ　ト
hachibitto
Japanese Vintage Computer Collection
Blog History

Show types: applicationconsoleexpansion/peripheralgame purchasemonitorothersystemall types

1 | 2 | 3

Talk-bun Tool is a tool for the X1 that provides Japanese text to voice synthesis. It doesn't necessarily sound too natural, but creating the Japanese spoken language on an 8-bit PC is relatively easy compared to creating the English spoken language. There are about 100 unique sounds, including blends, and they can be linked together without concern for stress placement. The PC-6001mkII even had the speech generation built into the hardware. continued ⇒
2025-06-29 - Joy Joy Pack
There were three software packages in the Joy Joy Pack series. For a brief period, I had all three. They're a neat-looking collection. continued ⇒
2025-06-15 - Joy Joy Pack 2
This is the second of three Joy Joy Packs. As its predecessor, it is a nicely presented, although cheaply packaged, collection of six QuickDisks containing utilities, study material, and a single QuickDisk with two games. Although it is cheaply packaged, the way in which it is cheaply packaged was changed quite a bit, and the end result was slightly better. continued ⇒
2024-11-09 - Towns OS 1.1 L10
There was a surprising amount of extra content on the FM Towns 1.1 L10 CD. I guess it shouldn't be that surprising, as they had space to burn (literally!), but it's a curious thing, computer manufacturers at the (1987-ish) rarely had 500MB+ of storage with nothing better to do than fill it up, so what would they come up with? Well here's Fujitsu's answer. continued ⇒
This is a collection of programs bundled with the MZ-80K2E that demonstrate various things that could be done with the system. Most systems of the day had such tapes, some better than others. This system is light on multimedia, so it doesn't pack too much of a punch, but it makes due with what it has. It loads from BASIC, so you need to ready that first. continued ⇒
Here's something you don't see everyday. It's a vision measurement tool for the PC-8001. To establish some form of accuracy, they expect you to use a standard NEC 12" monochrome monitor for the test, and you are supposed to stand 5 meters away from the screen. continued ⇒
It's not so common to find games for the MZ-1500, but applications are that much rarer. A bit ago, I found two boxed applications with manuals, it was quite a surprise! This one is called Can Can, it's a Japanese word processor. You already know it's a little bit special, because they actually put their label on in a sensible manner, so both the label and the case can be upright at the same time. So far, they're the only ones to do it that I've seen. continued ⇒
Casio chose a different path for its bundled software than most companies. While Sharp, NEC, and Fujitsu (and others) included some simple demos to show off the system's capabilities, Casio included regular software. I am sure someone who had an FP-1100 with its fairly limited range of software might appreciate this, but as someone who has amassed a bunch of old computers and realizes that the FP-1100 simply doesn't have that much software but still enjoys the machine itself, I wish they had included the demo. Oh well! continued ⇒
As far as system software and demos go, NEC is pretty solid. The system disks for the PC-8801mkIISR are no exception. There are two disks - N88 BASIC and Demonstration. continued ⇒
For a year or two, I had the PC-6001mkII and didn't know that it supported 15 colors. I thought it was limited to 8, like most digital RGB-endowed PCs of the early 80s. One thing did seem kind of off... when I typed anything into the included word processing software, I couldn't see any characters. I guessed that it needed some sort of expansion to function properly. One game (game is used a bit loosely here) was very hard to see, but not impossible. I thought it was just poor color choice by the programmers. Maybe they work on monochrome monitors or something. continued ⇒

1 | 2 | 3
八　ビ　ッ　ト　hachibitto