Welcome back to part 10 of my SepTandy Spectacular 3. In the last post we ended our look at Pocket Computer clones by taking a look at the Electronika MK-85. In this post we're moving from Pocket Computer clones to Tandy 100 clones starting with the NEC PC-8201.
Released in 1983, The NEC PC-8201 was one of the first notebook-style computers, It was a full blown personal computer with a keyboard an LCD display, all running off batteries and being about the size a notepad or a large book. Today a laptop is a common sight for portable computing, but at the time, it was almost unheard off.
NEC has been around since 1899 working in the Japanese telephone market, where they were the main supplier of switchboards for the country. NEC began working in the computer business in the 1950s, though the business wasn't as profitable as NEC hoped, so they continued investing profits from their telecommunication business..
In the 1970s, their Semiconductor Division developed several microprocessors including Intel 8080 compatible processors, soon resulting in the release of the TK-80 in 1976. It was relatively successful with hobbyists, So NEC continued making new computers for the growing market.
By 1982, NEC had a whole range of computers meant for every market: The 6001 (A low end home computer), The 8001 (A mid range education and business computer), The 8801 (A mid range business computer), and The 9801 (A high end business computer).
Meanwhile Kyocera, another company in the Japanese electronics industry, were interested in diving into the computer market as well. They were founded in 1959, and manufactured Integrated circuits and semiconductors.
Their response was the Kyotronic 85, released in early 1983. It boasted a large screen, 16 or 32K of RAM, A CMOS Backup Battery, and an 18 hour battery life.
However the sales ended up being miserable. So they OEMed the device to any company that was interested. NEC soon took the offer and released the device as the NEC PC-8201 shortly afterwards.
It became incredibly popular. So much so, that Kyocera also licensed the design to Tandy to become the Tandy 100. That's right, The PC-8201 was actually sold before the Tandy 100! Who would have thought?
The machine im showing is the NEC PC-8201A, which was the export version sold outside of Japan. It's exactly the same as the Japanese model, only it uses a different color scheme and has regular western legends on the keycaps as opposed to the japanese Katakana and Kanji symbols on the
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The machine has the exact same layout as the Tandy 100. On the front (or rather the top) of the machine, lies the LCD display, the model badge, the power LED, and the keyboard. The main differences are that the top function keys are layed out slightly differently as there's 5 function keys, sandwiched between a stop key, a Paste/Insert key, and a Delete/Insert key. It also has a proper set of cursor keys, somthing the Tandy 100 doesn't have and a nice bonus!
On the right side, there is the power switch and the display contrast adjustment wheel, same as the Tandy 100.
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On the back, there is the DC power port, the Memory Protection switch, the reset button, 2 serieal, the bar code reader, the Centronics compatible printer port, the RS232 serial port, and the cassette port.
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On the left side, there's a docking bay. This is where you can add an extra bank to expand it to 64K of RAM.
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And finally on the bottom, there is the battery compartment, the Memory Power switch, and the ROM expansion slot to add additional software, same as the Tandy 100.
Powering on the NEC PC-8201 is exactly the same as the Model 100, your instead are greeted with a menu of built in programs. There are 3 built in programs, the BASIC interpreter, a simple text editor, and a telcom program (the address book, and scheduler from the 100 aren't here). They work a bit like apps on a modern smartphone, in the fact that you could enter one program, and exit it to open another. The BASIC is also the same, so any BASIC program from the Tandy 100 will work fine on the NEC PC-8201. For demonstration, i'll type in the Hello World program as usual. One thing to note is that due to the display, you don't get as much vertical text on the screen as say, the TRS-80 for example, but it's still serviceable, especially considering the display.
Storage wise, the cassette port that is compatible with the Tandy 100, So any cable and cassette recorders, Radio Shack branded or otherwise, will work fine. NEC did provide a cassette recorder for the NEC PC-8201, The NEC PC-8281, which matches the style of the computer and was sold along side it. I like the look of it as it resembles similar tade drive sold for Japanese computers like the MSX. In fact, since it uses standard sockets, you can use it with an MSX as well.
There was also the 8221 thermal printer, useful for keeping hardcopies of your BASIC programs.
Other peripherals included a barcode reader an external modem, a carrying case, a portable printer, and various RAM and ROM upgrades.
For hardware, It uses the Exact same Hardware as the Model 100. It uses an OKI 80C85 CPU clocked at 2.4 MHz, anywhere from 16K to 64K of RAM (Double that of the Tandy 100), anywhere from 32K to 64K of ROM, the LCD screen that's capable of displaying text at a resolution of 40 Columns by 8 rows as well as bit mapped graphics at a resolution of 240 by 64 (With some being left blank for custom character sets), a small beeper speaker for sound, and can run off 4 AA batteries (with an Approximate 120 hour battery life) or the previously mentioned 6V power adapter.
So what's different from the Tandy 100? Well first is the different software as i've mentioned, but also some of the registries are different so you would need to rewrite the software in order for it to work.
The second difference is the NEC uses a 8.5V DC power supply while the Tandy 100 uses a 6V. So you cant swap the power adapters or else you'll probably cause damage to the units!
The third difference is that aforementioned cursor keys which while awkward are more than welcome to be included.
And the fourth difference is the expandability. The Tandy 100 could only expand the ROM, but the NEC uses Battery Backed RAM carts to store data.
As for the software, most Tandy 100 BASIC programs will work on an NEC PC-8201, but if its machine code you would need to do some patching in order for it to work. NEC provided a Personal Application Kit Cassette for the PC-8201, which provided a variety of programs from games, to business applications, to programing utilities.
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Much like the Model 100, The NEC PC-8201 was used for industrial applications and science laboratories as a programming terminal for configuration of control systems and instruments, as well as for schools, businesses and possibly even some small stores with its barcode reader and software, It didn't have as much of a hold on the journalism market, but still probably saw a far share of use in that field.
In 1984, NEC followed the PC-8201 with the PC-8300, which had a full 64K of RAM, a built in modem, and support for a floppy drive.
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It didn't have quite as long of a lifespan as the Tandy 100, but still managed to be sold until 1990, when NEC discontinued the PC-8201 and the PC-8300 to focus on their successful PC-9800 line. Kyocera also exited the computer business to focus on photocopiers after purchasing the Mita Industrial Company in 2000.
So how do I rate the NEC PC-8201 on compatibility? The NEC PC-8201 ranks as Fully Compatible due to using the same components and while it differs some in hardware, A significant amount produced for one machine will run on the other, with the remaining easy to convert over with modifications to the code.
This concludes Part 10 of my third Septandy Spectacular, join me next time as we continue our look at the Laser Portable Computers.
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