日本語
 |
2023-10-21 - Tomy Pyuta The Tomy Pyuta (released in the west as Tomy Tutor) is essentially a child's toy, but it offers a pretty distinct computing experience. For starters, it was a 16-bit computer. In 1982! In addition, it comes with a pretty good variety of games, although the controllers are awkward, and for a 16-bit system, the graphics feel underwhelming. continued ⇒ |
 |
2023-10-12 - Uncharted Waters for PC-8801mkIISR Recently, Yahoo Auctions business account yugen2plus has been selling a bunch of purportedly never-opened, never-used PC games for a variety of systems, mostly X1 and PC-8801. A lot of them have been on the pricey side, but some are in the realm of reasonably priced. continued ⇒ |
 |
2023-10-07 - Toshiba TVG-610 Somehow, Yahoo Auctions thought I might want the Toshiba TVG-610. Generally I limit my searches to computers, but that includes MSX, and sometimes looking at MSX stuff brings up Famicom results, which if you click on them may start to affect your results and return game stuff. Anyway, this came up on my "based on your browsing history" list, and I didn't buy it on the spot, but I sure was impressed by the aesthetics. I did eventually buy it, just because it was so cool looking.
continued ⇒ |
 |
2023-09-30 - National JR-100 The JR-100 is another product of the "incredibly compact and lightweight computer body but with an external PSU twice the weight of the computer" philosophy of computer manufacturing. The Sanyo PHC-25 still holds the title of actually most compact and lightweight computer in my collection. continued ⇒ |
 |
2023-09-23 - Commodore VIC-1001 I had quite resolved not to get a VIC-1001 early on in my collection (back when I had a tame 10 or so computers). But recently I've sort of felt like, "maybe I'll just grab this one, fire it up, and photograph it for the blog" for a number of machines, so when I found this one at a not-terrible price on Mercari, I decided to grab it. continued ⇒ |
 |
2023-09-18 - New VIP for FM-7 As my job is basically creating makeshift databases and reporting on them via PHP and JavaScript, I was kind of amused at how much more easily I could do my job if the whole office would just upgrade to FM-7s and deal with the limitations of this early-80s database software. It's very much like my job but using notepad instead of mysql, and using notepad instead of a browser. But it was fun to poke around on for a bit! continued ⇒ |
 |
2023-09-18 - Demo Tape v3.0 for X1 I am not actually sure what this is! It says "demo tape" but I don't believe it was shipped with any of the systems. The system tapes are black with black or blue and silver labels, but this is a white cassette with an orange-red label. My best guess is perhaps this was used by stores to display an endless loop demonstrating some of the X1 capabilities. I could imagine spending hours gazing at the various machines running their demos at a big Yodobashi Camera or the like. Anyway, here is some of the content. continued ⇒ |
 |
2023-09-09 - MZ-1500 Games I've been really fascinated with the MZ-1500 recently. Among the reasons is the QuickDisk drive. The QuickDisk medium was not very widely used in the home computer market, but I think it stakes an interesting and meaningful ground between tape and floppy disk. Like a tape, the medium is sequential in reading and writing, but the speed is more comparable to a floppy disk. The QuickDisk drive makes an ear-pleasing symphony of read/write sounds as it does its job. If you have a Famicom Disk System, you've surely already heard these sounds, as the FDS main unit is just a slightly modified QuickDisk drive, and their disks just slightly modified QuickDisks. continued ⇒ |
 |
2023-09-02 - Takara Game Pasokon So I'll start by saying, this is a pretty interesting system! I don't think it's an excellent system, but it separates itself from being either a standard computer or a console pretty well. It is designed by a company with "real" computer roots - SORD - and is in fact an identical clone of the SORD M5, so the end result is, despite being essentially a toy, it has a much less cheap feel to it than its peers: the Sega SC-3000 and Tomy Pyuta. continued ⇒ |
 |
2023-08-26 - NEC PC-8001mkIISR My heart won't listen to my brain's rules, so now I have a PC-8001mkIISR. I had originally decided that I don't need this machine because I have a PC-8001 already. Sure, the mkIISR is fancier and more featureful, but it's bigger and it starts to encroach on some of the PC-8801FH's territory. continued ⇒ |
| 八 ビ ッ ト hachibitto |
