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PC-9800 series: introduction, etc

by quirble, last updated january 15 2025

these are stupid stupid computers. god bless.

the PC-9800 series is kind of silly. it's an extremely annoying set of extremely distinct computer systems that is barely known about outside of Japan, and the architecture has been essentially dead for more than 25 years now, but it's also really nice and funny if you get to know it properly, ok? i swear!

read this for more insight into the history of the PC-98 series

hardware weirdness

first of all, these are japanese computers - 100V is the standard, get used to it. just like [one mode of] the X68000 computers, the video refreshrate of these is a nice solid 24khz (which doesn't sync up to most VGA monitors, or shows the video but throws a sync error warning on some). the standard video connector is a non-standard DA-15 with different pinout than the apple macintosh DA-15 of the time (although later PC-9821 models could switch to 31khz with a VGA connector). The keyboard connector is a nonstandard miniDIN connector (or DIN if you have the very first PC-9801), the mouse connector is either a DE-9 or miniDIN depending on era (the mouse design itself is a quadrature mouse). of course this is just the surface level stuff, let's look deeper.

C-bus! (or "98-bus, or "general expansion slot", etc) This is a 100-pin 16-bit expansion slot format for the PC-98 series of computers that allows anything from sound boards, modems, SCSI compatibility cards, to even processor cards and ram expanders to be installed. it's also toolless, but depending on the card, you STILL need to take the top off - my AlphaData SS-10 soundcard needed to have a separate connector plugged in which required the top to come off and the HDD to come out. Speaking of which, these machines did have internal HDDs as an option, but only for the higher-tier machines.

weirder still are the workstation class machines, specifically the Hyper-98 lineup. The PC-H98s introduced a NEW bunch of weird connectors and formats, like the notoriously extremely hard to get high-resolution 26W3 video connector (build these now before stocks dry up!) and the "NESA" bus, a 32-bit expansion slot format specifically for H98 units that allows even more absurd expansions like special video output cards and even a rumored Intel i860 RISC CPU card. Good luck ever finding this. These retailed for quite literally a million yen when new. As of writing this article, there are no images of this card online and no discussion of this card or its features are readily available.

of course, pc-9821 machines released around the end of the life of the PC-98 are super funny because they have to be both Wintel slop AND PC-98 at the same time! so they have both PCI slots and C-bus, VGA@31khz but also the older standard too, etc. and yes, they can run windows... a specific-to-PC98 version of windows (i think windows 2000 is the newest version that will run). remember, they're not AT compatible!

software

this is what the PC-98 is mostly known for in the west. The extremely overkill graphics system (designed for multicolor kanji support) was really good for the time, so naturally, as developers moved away from the older PC-8800 series of 8 bit computers, they went to the PC-98 and were able to make games look pretty good - games like puyo puyo tsu on the PC-98 looked (and sounded) similar enough to the arcade or home console editions, and there was even a C-bus card so PC-FX games could play on the system! of course, that's not why you're here though. oh no.

i know why you're here. you're some kind of pervert. some kind of fiend. you like seeing R-18 content. naked women on your screen. and guess what, the PC-98 has a lot of that. this was a system designed for deprived salarymen of course, so adult dating simulator visual novel type games were extremely popular and common on this platform. of course the Rance series by Alice Soft exists, but how about "Hanafuda de PON!", a japanese strip hanafuda game?? i wish i was making this up!! the PC-98 has it all.

unfortunately i doubt the PC-98 will be able to escape its legacy of being The Anime Porn Computer in the west, but that's fine with me honestly. surprisingly more and more games on this platform are actually being translated into english for those who can't speak japanese, such as "Dead of the Brain", "YU-NO", and others! which is pretty cool i guess. now if only a team could translate the mountains of old webpages (which could go down at any moment) talking about the hardware idiosyncracies of the PC-98, dip switch settings, C-bus cards, etc. oh well...

My 9801RA2 ｜ My 9801RA51 ｜ My 9821CX2 ｜ My 9821V166 ｜ other stuff