Fairly early on in my collection, I had an FM-77. It's the successor to the FM-7, released, I believe, at the same time as the NEW7. There are four revisions of FM-77 and I don't recall which one I had, though I believe it was a D2 or L2. At the time I couldn't get it to work, but there was much I didn't understand back then, so perhaps it was through no fault of the machine. Although I couldn't use it, one thing that stuck out for me was that I loved the feel of the keyboard. It is perhaps the best one I've used in my collection. It's not clicky, which I tend to like, but it has a satisfying clang sound when you strike a key. In any event, I didn't really have the idea to blog about it at the time, so I just quietly sold it off, hopefully into more capable hands.

Recently, I had another opportunity to get an FM-77. This time it was an L4, distinguishable from the L2 in that it comes with a 400-line card for increased video resolution, and an extra memory card for supporting that extra resolution. Take those cards out and you've effectively downgraded to an FM-77 L2. It came with its special cables (both the digital RGB cable and CMT (data recorder) cable are unique on this machine, whereas most other models (including the FM-8 and FM-7) use a common cable. It also came with its original box, which had seen better days.

The machine itself and keyboard were in pretty good shape already, and cleaned up a bit nicer still. Now I wonder if my mind is playing tricks on me, because this doesn't actually feel like the greatest keyboard. Not bad at all, but didn't feel quite the same. Was it a difference between the D1/D2 and L2/L4? Is this one just a little more worn-down? Or did I just enjoy it more when I did it the first time? Anyway, whatever the situation is, it's still a nice-looking keyboard with an entirely decent touch.

The FM-77s used a big heavy-gauge coiled keyboard cable, with the D1/D2 variants being yellow in color, similar to the plastic cover for the expansion slots on the FM-7. This, the L2/L4 version, have a more typical white cable. The connector is monstrous. However, I believe it had to be hot-swappable, or at least as far as anyone knew back then, because there was no dedicated joystick port and the only joysticks I've ever seen for this system were meant to be connected to the keyboard port, but you also need the keyboard to launch at least some of the games. A hot swap seems inevitable but I don't want to be the one to do it.

The FM-77 series models have a convenient rear hatch for accessing your expansion slots. The L4 already comes with two slots populated - the aforementioned 400-line card and memory expansion card. Oh, if it looks like three cards, that's because the 400-line card is two connected boards, but it fits into a single expansion slot row. There are two remaining expansion card slots - one full-length and one half-length. I believe the full-length one would be for a Nihongo-tsushin card - a card that facilitates Japanese entry of kanji and also comes with a serial port, and the small one for an FM sound card. I think a kanji card would also fit in the smaller slot, but the system already has kanji built onboard.

I already knew it was working at the time of sale, and the seller turned out to be a friend of mine, so I imagined there would be no problem with at least turning it on and getting a display, but my friend did not have bootable floppy disks so the drives were untested. He should have told me so I could give him a copy! But anyway, it worked fine. Booted into BASIC and was able to read the directory contents, did a "format" of a cleaning disk on both drives just to be safe. Then I loaded up my go-to test game - Ultima IV - to give it some heavier usage. Looks great, sounds fine.

But it could sound better... Aha! I have an FM sound card for my FM-NEW7, let's power down and plug that in. Connect my trusty portable speaker that I used to use for English lessons.

It's sounding better. Not perfect, it has a kind of gritty quality to it. I am not sure if my FM sound card is a little fried or if the sound quality just wasn't as good on the FM-7 expansion cards as it was on the FM77AV series built-in FM sound generation. But in any event, it still sounds nice enough. On the title screen in Ultima IV, you can preview all the music by pressing the 1-4 keys. Neat feature! Here is a 30-second clip of each song, using truly awful recording techniques. It's just me and my smartphone here!