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Searching for NEC PC-8001A software & hardware

1980s_john said:
... On others I get either PASSWORD, or the message:

Dash 80 loading - Dash 80 can't run under these conditions

Any idea what this means?
Click to expand...


I've found the following description of Dash-80 (in Japanese so open in Chrome to translate):

https://retrocomputerpeople.blog.so-net.ne.jp/2010-10-25

"Dash-8X started with the concept of powering up Dash-80 dedicated to N-BASIC and operating it on all NEC's PC-8001 / 8801 series, but just a little bit here and now Release the specification.

For those of you who don't know, I will introduce you a little bit Dash-80.

As described above, Dash-8X is based on Dash-80, which is a program loader compatible with Disk BASIC and file system of PC-8001.

....

The functions of Dash-80 can be summarized as follows:
(Reprinted from Dash-80 Readme.txt)

- Program loader for NEC PC-8001 / 8801 series
- Operates in N-BASIC mode
- The free area is not used except when starting up
- File system compatible with Disk BASIC
- You can load / execute binary programs compatible with BASIC programs / N80 / N80SR / N88-Disk BASIC written in N-BASIC
- It has a Disk BASIC compatible auto start function.
- Error message equivalent to Disk BASIC is displayed
- Eliminated the MOUNT / REMOVE command that was a drawback of Disk BASIC
- The format of the FILES / LFILES instruction is different from Disk BASIC
- Contents displayed / printed by FILES / LFILES instruction are different from Disk BASIC

======================================
So all good stuff. Sadly alot of PC-8001 software such as J80 and Dash-80 were hosted on Geocities.jp which is now closed, and I can't find the new websites for these packages.

Regards,
John
 
Hi again, just found another piece of the PC-8001 jigsaw :) I've read the following description of N-Basic and N80-Basic:

https://retrocomputerpeople.blog.so-net.ne.jp/2010-09-26

"The 4th ROM is more famous in the PC-8801 series, but the 4th ROM also exists in the PC-8001 series.

The PC-8001 also has a ROM socket that allows the user to extend RS-232C.
You can also use IEEE-488 (GP-IB) by connecting an expansion unit such as PC-8011 / 8012/8013 (PC-8097 is required for PC-8012/8013).
The 4th ROM on the expansion board plays the role of this IEEE-488 control function.


The PC-8001mkII is equipped with N80-BASIC, an extension of N-BASIC, and the extended part is stored in the 4th ROM.
Although it is possible to select BASIC to be activated by dip switch, the difference is only whether 4th ROM is enabled or not.
During the boot process, the status of the dip switch is checked. If N80-BASIC is selected, 4th ROM is enabled. If N-BASIC is selected, 4th ROM is disabled.

The 4th ROM of the PC-8001 / 8001mkII is also initialized in the same procedure as the PC-8801 series as described above, so just enabling the 4th ROM will initialize the N80-BASIC extension.

====================================================

So as standard te PC8001 is fitted with three 2364 ROMs giving it N-Basic:

http://www.old-computers.com/museum/photos.asp?t=1&c=178&st=1

and has an empty socket for the 4th ROM. Looks like the PC-8001 mkII has the N80 ROM fitted as standard. So hopefully copying this ROM to a PC-8001 will give it N80-Basic. I just happen to have some MCM 68764C, 8K EPROMs, which are equivalent to the 2364 ROM. So I will go away and try blowing an EPROM and fitting it to my PC-8001 (mk 1) - fingers crossed!

Regards,
John
 
1980s_john said:
So as standard the PC8001 is fitted with three 2364 ROMs giving it N-Basic:

http://www.old-computers.com/museum/photos.asp?t=1&c=178&st=1

and has an empty socket for the 4th ROM. Looks like the PC-8001 mkII has the N80 ROM fitted as standard. So hopefully copying this ROM to a PC-8001 will give it N80-Basic. I just happen to have some MCM 68764C, 8K EPROMs, which are equivalent to the 2364 ROM. So I will go away and try blowing an EPROM and fitting it to my PC-8001 (mk 1) - fingers crossed!
Click to expand...

Tried this on the J80 emulator adding the 4th ROM from PC-8001 Mk II N80 BASIC to the PC-8001 N-BASIC, but no joy. Came up with the 'NEC N-80 BASIC Ver 1.0' welcome screen but no response from the keyboard. Hopefully there are some useful extension ROMs for the PC-8001 (Mk 1) other than for RS232 or GP-IB. Looks like the PC-8001 Mk II Basic ROMs were designed to allow backwards compatibility to the Mk1 to allow N-Basic by disabling the 4th ROM (with the N80 Basic extensions).

Worth a shot anyway :)

Regards,
John
 
After stumbling across this thread, I went thru my attic and dug out a NEC-PC8001a along with a PC-3011 and PC-8031. I had to buy a video adapter and a monitor off of eBay. Everything seem to work. I haven't found the manuals yet. I think I have diskettes, but they are still hiding. The CP/M disk that was in the drive all these years won't boot (surprise!). Any ideas where I could get a Disk Basic diskette or CP/M disk ? I asking cause it's your fault I dug this stuff out of the attic. I would have let sleeping dogs lay, but you guys got me all excited about this piece of history. I'd love to see it in action again.

Thanks in advance,

Ron
 
Using SamDisk you must be able to write PC-8001 disks like the ones here. As usual, your mileage may vary, the 5.25" drive you use and the floppy controller the PC has could make the difference. Btw, you need a PC with 5.25" floppy drive and XP installed, do you?
It's a tiny bit easier when using 3.5" floppy drive units; so you may want to install one in your PC-8031, you only need a pair of power and data cable adapters. The 3.5" drive must be also slightly modified to be compatible, it must be set to DS0 (drive A or 0) and RDY signal must be enabled (or wired to GND in the PC-8031 controller side).
If your 3.5" drive is old enough maybe it has some jumpers to accomplish the above.
 
Thanks ! Looks promising. I have What you suggest. I'm going to try the 5.525 route first. I'll let you know what happened.
 
inotarobot said:
Hi there fokes,

Well looking through my bits, I have a PC-8001B yes that is a B on the end.

Also have the PC-8021B I/O unit still packed in the original box. It has only an expansion memory card installed.

And it has the interface cable to the PC-8001B. Will try and post some information on cable to aid anyone wishing to make one.

I will get both powered up by end of January this year hopefully.

Then make a decision if they will stay in my downsized collection or if I will sell them.

regards
David
Click to expand...

VERY SORRY ALL. I realized I did not post pics of the interface cable.

Note the copper mesh braid fully surrounding the cores.

This copper mesh shield braid is connected to the metal band surround around the blue 50 way edge connector that when plugged into the Expansion box is Grounded by the Beryllium spring finger that can be seen in lower left of the following picture above the PCB edge fingers.

6tXfrsd.jpg

tNvWDym.jpg


Hopefully these pics will help someone

VVFbLEe.jpg


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NeOAVQg.jpg


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QZYowCL.jpg


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2FVNT9z.jpg
 
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And here is some current photos of my system, taken in middle of Sept 2021

As yet i have still not made a video cable to then power up this system; a task I need to do before the end of this year 2021


rOJwgYW.jpg



6tXfrsd.jpg



JBNvXFi.jpg



ndYTos7.jpg



S5LJBUO.jpg



40Qb44G.jpg



tmfPuPX.jpg
 
1980s_john said:
Hi,
I hooked my PC-8001BE up to an oscilloscope this evening to take a look at the video outputs. I used the pin-outs as per the old-computers.com site, these seemed to be correct when looking at the back of the computer facing the sockets.


I found a similar adapter (well NEC computer RGB in to component video out) here:

http://tulip-house.ddo.jp/digital/DIGITAL_RGB_COMPONENT/english.html

Regards,
John
Click to expand...


sadly just now 22nd Sept 2021 I tried tulip-house link and its dead.
 
Really nice setup!, love your PC-8001B, being a 220/240V machine now I'm sure the B suffix in NEC machines means "British"...or european to some extent. Mine is the standard japanese version and it's pretty yellowed.

The interface cable seems a simple passthrough cable, isn't it, just maybe with some extra shielding and short to avoid data loss.
 
I have a Japanese PC-8001 on the way here, but I've had a couple 8801s (mkII, mkIISR, MH, and now an MA.) Based on Nishida-san's website above, it sounds like the 8001 should have the same colour-video pinout as the mkII. I've also found that it's the same pinout for the Fujitsu FM-7, Sanyo MBC-555, early PC-9801, and some other machines as well. On the PC-6001mkII, it is the same pinout for R, G, B, but doesn't include the "intensity" line which doubles the number of colours.

If you have a 15kHz-capable monitor (I use an NEC MultiSync 1970NX and a Dell P2314Ht) I made an adapter for my 8801mkII that used 150Ω resistors in series to attenuate the TTL R, G, B lines down to "VGA-ish" levels. It should work on a cheap upscaler like an eBay Gonbes GBS-8xxx as well. It's based on this archived page for the PC-9801, which uses a similar digital-RGB output.

I think the 8001 is only capable of the "N" 15kHz low-resolution mode, but the medium-resolution 24kHz "V1" mode of the mkII will also work with those monitors and this adapter. You'll need a male-male 8-pin DIN cable, which should save your fingers and/or potatoes from soldering to a DIN yourself.

An RGB-to-HDMI Raspberry Pi board should also work for video. I'm working on a Raspberry Pi Pico-based upscaler/converter that will handle these as well as RGBI signals (the aforementioned 6001mkII, IBM PC CGA,) but the prototype boards are stuck in shipping and I haven't even started on the software yet. Hopefully I'll have something working by April of next year?

If you want to try it yourself, I put a PCBWay shared project up. You can download the Gerber and use it on whatever fabrication service you want – I get a small credit if you use it through PCBWay but their shipping tends to be more expensive so I likely won't use it :)

A Japanese hobbyist has also made an excellent SD-card interface board for the 8001, which could help you sidestep this whole mess with floppies – it loads tape images which a lot of software was distributed in, and seems to have a modified disk BASIC. I plan to build one of these myself once I can track down the parts.
 
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Another PC-8012A expansion unit available on eBay US:
Click to expand...

Wow!, it's tempting but just shipping and taxes makes buying in the states a real PITA :-(. I'm also really curious about if it's populated with cards or not.

A Japanese hobbyist has also made an excellent SD-card interface board for the 8001, which could help you sidestep this whole mess with floppies
Click to expand...

Nice!, seems also easy to build and it's even compatible with the mkII.
 
A search to see if this disk was archived anywhere circled me back to my own thread, years later. I did eventually get the floppy disk unit, but I'm still looking for The Wedge, or another PC-8001A with one already attached.

the wedge disk.jpg
 
Greetings all.
I've finally managed to get some games working on my PC-8001BE. The other weekend I went to the Japanese event at the UK Centre for Computing History in Cambridge, and met with Roy Templeman who was showing some of his collection including a PC-8001 (imported from Japan). He kindly sent me a zip of 11 games in WAV format that can be played back from a PC into the cassette port of the PC-8001. I've uploaded this to Dropbox:

www.dropbox.com

NEC PC-8001 games WAV.zip

Shared with Dropbox
www.dropbox.com www.dropbox.com

You may already have found this elsewhere, I've tried 3 games so far and they all run fine on my UK PC-8001BE (still only got monochrome video working - yet to sort out an RGB adapter).

Later in the week I watched Joes' computer museum video on his PC-8001A:


I got in touch with him and he kindly sent me a set of floppy disk images (he recommends Samdisk), which again I've put on Dropbox (with his permission):

www.dropbox.com

PC8001A.zip

Shared with Dropbox
www.dropbox.com www.dropbox.com

I've yet to try these, another of my to-do list items is sort out my NEC disk drives, but now I have some images to try this is a high priority!

Regards,
John
 
1980s_john said:
that the PC-8031 is a single sided drive (which I earlier knew as it has FD-50A single sided floppy drives), and the PC-8031-2W is double sided.
Click to expand...
Probably not very compatible, but note that the PC-8031 can be upgraded to an 8031-2W by replacing the drives with double-sided ones and putting in a slightly tweaked copy of the PC-80S31 ROM. (Or, perhaps alternatively, -2W ROM; I have a -2W and so I should dump the ROM at some point.) This is described in I/O 1985年09月号 on p.194.
 
1980s_john said:
So as standard te PC8001 is fitted with three 2364 ROMs giving it N-Basic...and has an empty socket for the 4th ROM.
Click to expand...
Correct so far. The 4th ROM is an "expansion" ROM that can either be in the motherboard socket or supplied from a device on the expansion connector, as demonstrated in the CMT SD-Card project that is linked in a mesage above. If the ROM starts with the magic cookie 'AB' ($41 $42) the BIOS will call it at boot, and you can do things like add BASIC commands.

Looks like the PC-8001 mkII has the N80 ROM fitted as standard. So hopefully copying this ROM to a PC-8001 will give it N80-Basic.
Click to expand...

The PC-8001mkII has both N-BASIC and N80-BASIC; you switch between them with DIP switch 8 on the back (up/on=N-BASIC, down/off=N80-BASIC), as described in the User's Manual. These are in a pair of 32K ROMs, though N-BASIC uses only 24K of that; I don't know if the N-BASIC ROM has anything in the expansion ROM area (top 8K). And there is a third socket, unpopulated by the factory, for an 8K expansion ROM, just like the PC-8001.

N80-BASIC needs 32K of ROM, but as far as I can tell so far (through some limited experimentation) the top 8K does not replace the expansion ROM but instead is its own separate bank that's switched in only when necessary, replacing the expansion ROM during that time. So you almost certainly can't just copy the 32K N80-BASIC ROM to four 8K ROMs and put it in the PC-8001.

But since you seem to have the ability to dump the ROMs in your PC-8001A, I'd love to get a copy of them so I could compare them with the Japanese versions. I'm not sure if I can receive PMs in this forum (I know I can't send them), so it's probaby best to use my e-mail address from my GitHub profile.

For what it's worth, I have a couple of repos with 8001 information. My personal notes on NEC machines cover quite a lot; the most interesting for this topic may be NEC PC-8001 Series. I also have a PC-8001 reverse engineering repo which incudes ROM dumps, a start on some disassemblies, schematics, and various notes.
 
Also, for what it's worth, bastok is well on the way to supporting detokenisation and tokenisation of PC-8001 N-BASIC and N80-BASIC, and I have support in cmtconv to convert tokenised BASIC and machine-language files to WAV files that can be loaded via CMT and vice versa coming as well. (Note that CLOAD and CSAVE do not support ASCII saves in either N- or N80-BASIC.)

All this stuff is currently on development branches in those repos, but I thought I'd let folks know in case they have an urgent need for it. (A friend did, which is why I started hacking in support and we've successfully tokenised the xdisk2.bas program, converted it to WAV, and loaded it into a PC-8001mkII. It didn't work for other reasons, however.) Best to contact me through Discord (0cjs) if you need something and need help with it.

I anticipate that getting this cleaned up and onto the main branches is at least a couple of weeks away, but at that point it should be easily usable by anyone.

By the way, Discord is by far the best way to contact me; I don't get e-mail about replies to threads here for some reason (yes, I've checked my spam folder), so I just check by when I happen to remember.
 
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