Floppy Days 122 - NEC PC-6001 and Japanese Computers with Carlos Camacho - Part II

Floppy Days Vintage Computing Podcast

NEC TREK PC-6001, Part II

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Welcome to Floppy Days #122 for January, 2023. And I’m your host, Randy Kindig.

We are currently covering the very productive year for home computers of 1982. As regular listeners will know, we’ve been covering the ZX Spectrum and the myriad of information about that machine. While we still have more information to cover, such as emulation, Web sites, and a lot more, we are currently taking a tiny step back to pick up coverage of a machine that I recently acquired and wanted to talk about, but which came out in very late 1981. That machine is the Nippon Electric Company (NEC) PC-6001 and its US variation, the PC-6001A, or NEC-TREK. It actually was released in November, 1981 in Japan. Thus, you can see that this is really a very tiny detour to go back and pick up this machine. It’s one I didn’t know about, honestly, and when I acquired a very clean, boxed version in the Great Barn Find of 2022, not only did I decide to keep the machine but also to cover it on Floppy Days. I hope you can forgive me this minor detour off the path of covering the machines in the approx. order they were released. I think you’ll find this machine interesting, as I did, and enjoy hearing about it.

This is the second episode of a 2-part arc on this machine, due to the amount of material we were able to pull together and length of time it took to go through it. Last episode we covered history and tech specs (as well as a brief interview with my co-host), and this month we will cover the remaining usual topics.

With me this month again to provide the co-hosting duties will be Carlos Camacho. Carlos lived in Japan for a while and has a great perspective on this line of computers, as well as a lot of experience and knowledge around Japanese computers in general, which I think you’ll find interesting. The research he did on the PC-6000 line a few years ago was a tremendous help in pulling together information for this show. At the end of the day, if you have an interest in acquiring anything for this platform, you’ll need the information that Carlos provides on how to navigate the Japanese vintage computer market. I know I learned a ton from Carlos.

Very soon we’ll return to ZX Spectrum coverage.

As usual, I will also talk a bit about a few new acquisitions (beyond the barn find) that have come my way. In addition, I’ll briefly tell you about upcoming shows of which I’m aware and share any feedback I’ve gotten.

I hope you enjoy the show!

Links Mentioned in the Show:

New Acquisitions

• IBM PC5140 Display Adapter - http://ohlandl.ipv7.net/5140/5140.html#CRT_Display
• Spectrum Machine Language for the Absolute Beginner by William Tang - https://amzn.to/3Y1p8rq
• C128D JiffyDOS - https://store.go4retro.com/jiffydos-kernal-rom-overlay-ic/
• Atari Fast BASIC - https://github.com/dmsc/fastbasic

Upcoming Computer Shows

• VCF East 2023 - Apr 14-16, 2023 - InfoAge Science and History Museums, Wall, NJ - https://vcfed.org/events/vintage-computer-festival-east/
• The Commodore Los Angeles Super Show - April 15-16, 2023 - Burbank VFW Hall, Burbank, CA - https://www.portcommodore.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=class:start
• 31st Annual “Last” CocoFest - April 22-23, 2023 - Holiday Inn & Suites Chicago, Carol Stream, IL - https://www.glensideccc.com/cocofest/
• Indy Classic Computer and Video Game Expo - April 29 & 30 - Crowne Plaza Airport Hotel, Indianapolis, IN - https://indyclassic.org/
• Pacific Commodore Expo NW v4 - June 24-25 - “Interim” Computer Museum, Seattle, WA - https://www.portcommodore.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=pacommex:start j
• KansasFest, the largest and longest running annual Apple II conference - July 18-23, 2023 - Rockhurst University in Kansas City, Missouri - https://www.kansasfest.org/
• Southern Fried Gaming Expo - July 28-30 2023 - Atlanta, GA - https://gameatl.com/
• Portland Retro Gaming Expo - October 13-15, 2023 - Oregon Convention Center - https://retrogamingexpo.com/

Feedback

• Khalid Yousif
• NEC PC-6001 MkII SR FM synth music capability - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvVq8MHoybA
• Khalid’s website to document and archive findings on the Iraqi Warkaas - https://warkaa.org/
• YouTube Playlist by Todd Geiger - Computers - In Their Own Words
• Byte High No Limit Podcast - https://sunspotstories.podbean.com/

Popular Magazines/Newsletters

• PC-6000, 6600 information magazine SAVE, produced by Hokuten (owner of pc-6001.net) - http://www.pc-6001.net/p6/save/index.html
• Oh, PC! - all NEC models - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:First_Issue_of_Oh!PC.jpg
• I/O Magazine - https://archive.org/details/iomagazine
• PIO Magazine - https://archive.org/details/PioVol.1

Books

• PC-6000,6600 related book list - http://www.pc-6001.net/p6/syoseki/index.html
• Amazon Japan - to get books in Japanese

Software

• TOSEC: NEC PC 6001 (archive.org) - https://archive.org/details/NEC_PC_6001_TOSEC_2012_04_23
• Software Compilation Neo Kobe - NEC PC-6001 (archive.org) - https://archive.org/details/Neo_Kobe_NEC_PC-6001_2016-02-25

Ads and Appearances

• https://oldcomputers.net/nec-pc-6001.html
• video ad - (Japanese with English subtitles)
• https://archive.org/details/necpapikonpc6001acomputercommercial1981subsvtcdvplemfm
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTCdVPlemFM

Emulators

• https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/12241/how-do-i-use-nec-pc-6001-p6-or-cas-files
• PC6001V - http://papicom.net/p6v/
• PC6001VW - http://p6ers.net/bernie/develop/pc6001vw3.html
• iP6 and iP6 Plus
• Windy’s Room - http://www.eonet.ne.jp/~windy/index.html
• iP6 home page - http://www.retropc.net/isio/ip6/
• VNECTREK - October 27, 2009 in the Wayback Machine - https://web.archive.org/web/20091027114600/http://www.geocities.com/emucompboy/
• MAME/MESS - https://www.mamedev.org/

Buying One Today

• freight forwarding companies
• buyee
• zenmarket
• Jauce

Community

• Facebook - Japanese Vintage Computer Users - https://www.facebook.com/groups/japanesevintagecomputers
• Forums
• AtariAge - https://forums.atariage.com/forum/116-classic-computing-discussion/
• VC Federation - https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?forums/other/
• PC-6000,6600 information bulletin board at pc-6001.net - http://www.pc-6001.net/cgi/p6bbs/imgbbs.cgi
• Reddit - https://www.reddit.com/r/pc6001/

Current Web Sites

• Purchasing today at The Beep Shop - https://www.beep-shop.com/list/pc60_c.html
• Write-up of the PC-6001 at the 1982 Consumer Electronics Show in the May, 1982 Byte Magazine (archive.org)
• Write-up of the PC-6001 in the March, 1983 Byte Magazine (archive.org) https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1983-03-rescan/page/n503/mode/2up?view=theater&q=6000
• NEC PC-6001 search at archive.org - https://archive.org/search.php?query=nec+pc-6001&sin=
• Obscure Systems Showcase: 10 Games For The NEC PC6001 by Sharopolis (YouTube) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jREmdyXXLhE
• The PC-6001: NEC's home challenger by Re:Enthused (YouTube) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYfC3YwvGLA
• PC-6001 series portal site - http://p6ers.net/
• some PC-6001 software (WAV for real machine and .P6 for emulator) - http://inufuto.web.fc2.com/8bit/
• iP6 information and links at retropc.net - http://www.retropc.net/isio/2ndindex.html
• PC-6001 World - http://www.pc-6001.net/p6/index.html
• http://vector.co.jp - download site

References

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC-6000_series
• NEC Retro - https://necretro.org/
• https://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=177&st=1
• GiantBomb.com - https://www.giantbomb.com/nec-pc-6001/3045-115/
• OldComputers.net - https://oldcomputers.net/nec-pc-6001.html
• https://www.wikiwand.com/en/PC-6000_series
• https://forums.atariage.com/topic/233915-i-now-own-and-am-baffled-by-a-japanese-nec-pc-6001/

Co-host

• The Color Computer Store - https://twitter.com/trs80cocostore, @TRS80CocoStore, https://www.ebay.com/usr/colorcomputerstore