I found this pretty unique set of items on Mercari a few days ago. It included a Pasopia7 computer with two boxed cartridges, three Pasopia7-dedicated peripherals and one Pasopia7 game, most of which I didn't even know existed. An Epson TF-10 dual disk drive unit (commonly available for other systems but this was the first time to see the Pasopia7 unit), a color printer/plotter, and an RS-232 adapter round out the peripherals collection. It also included a modem, which while not Pasopia7-specific, is pretty neat-looking. The game is 3-D Bomber Man (yes, that Bomber Man [it even says so on the box]). Everything but the modem was contained in its original box, and it seems like every manual and other piece of paper was saved, except the warranty cards which I might imagine were dutifully filled out and mailed off.

First, I've already taken numerous photos of the system as well as the box and manuals, so please refer to those at their respective articles.

It's not often that you see Pasopia7 cartridges. There may be others, but to date the only cartridges I've seen are a joystick adapter, a kanji ROM, a 4KB SRAM expansion, and an OA-BASIC language game collection. In that sense, this lot didn't come with anything unexpected, as these were the joystick adapter and kanji ROM cartridges. But what is unique is that they came in their original boxes. While I guess it makes sense they came in boxes, I'd never seen one before. The previous owner took really good care of them through the decades.

Now we move on to the floppy drives. The Epson TF-10 is available on a variety of other systems, I most often see them for the FM-7. They pretty much always seem to be yellowed (at least, the ones that grab my attention are), and this is no exception. The box and internal packaging material has managed to stay in great shape, though. It also came with a modest collection of useful disks, such as CP/M and some applications for CP/M. The photos of individual titles is not the complete set of disks, just the cross-section of titles I recognize and disks with semi-legible labels (you might have to download them and view them full-size before they become legible, though).

This is the RS-232C adapter. I was not expecting this big a box for such a device. Truth be told, I don't know what I was expecting, but this definitely took me by surprise. For some of my computers, RS-232 is a built-in connector as inconspicuous as any other rear port, for some it's an add-on card with varying elegancies in implementation. But for the Pasopia7, it's an external box with a thick cable connecting it to the system bus and requires an external power supply. A couple of people were interested in seeing the insides, so I complied. Feel free to reverse engineer it!

Next up is the non-Pasopia-specific item, the modem, which would have been attached to the above RS-232C adapter. It's pretty neat! For one thing, it was made by Aiwa; I have never seen an Aiwa modem before, and in typical Aiwa style, it's snazzy. Second, it has a volume control for the monitor, so you can really crank up the "pii-gaa" (partial onomatopoeia for modem sound in Japanese, according to this site). And there is a "tape in/out" port on the back of the modem. I imagine it was to directly record something as you were downloading it? I'd never seen that before, but I guess that's because by the time I got my first modem, hard drives were already commonplace (my first modem was only 2400 baud, but one of the first (and last) things I did with it was buy a 14.4K baud modem to replace it). Anyway, when you play a tape through a data recorder via the tape in/out port, if you have the modem set to 1200 baud, it flashes the DCD and RXD lights. Nifty!

I loathe getting printers. They take up so much space and while I expect there's a good chance they still work, their ribbons or ink have dried up and many require special paper (special size, tractor feed, thermal, etc.). I typically have no means or motivation to really test them. This one is getting a bit more attention than usual, as it is boxed and a matching accessory for one of my favorite systems, but more on that later. For now, here's what it's like.

Finally we end up at 3-D Bomber Man. I have this game on my X1 D but have only played it once. When I played it on the X1 D, though, I hadn't yet played the original Bomber Man, which I recently have on my Multi8 and MZ-700. I see now that while 3-D Bomber Man seems to have little to do with PC Engine-era Bomber Man, it is clearly a "let's make (early) Bomber Man a 3-D game" success. It's got the critical elements of Bomber Man and now I have a newfound respect for the 3-D rendition of the explosion smoke.