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I now own (and am baffled by) a Japanese NEC PC-6001


JCCyC

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Yeah, I'm the guy in white.

 

 

Repair (had a busted cap that was shorting the +12V line): https://plus.google.com/photos/+DanielCampos/albums/6105297657130285409

 

So, looks like a fun machine, but finding information about it has been a PITA. I can't even find the cassette pinout. Is it that DIN-8 at the back?

 

I found a bunch of pages about it but only in Japanese. It'd be nice to find a mailing list or web forum, then even if it was in Japanese I could communicate via Google Translator.

 

Any pointers will be greatly appreciated.

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It was marketed in the US as the NEC Trek which had a regular keyboard but was the same otherwise.

I had complete manuals to it but the were destroyed in a fire (along with the rest of my computer collection).

The machine only sold in the US for a few months and I don't think it was ever sold anywhere else but Japan so it has almost no following outside Japan.
I seen to remember there being 4 or 5 sites dedicated to it that were pretty good but programming info was pretty much in Japanese.

The best way I can describe the machine is a Z80 equivalent to the TRS-80 Color Computer.
It uses the 6847 for graphics and has a custom chip that can switch the palette on the fly using a separate bank of RAM to determine palette. I think it could even change modes from one part of the screen to another but maybe that was the MKII which was enhanced.
Since Japan uses a form of NTSC the color artifacting in RG6 graphics mode that was used on the CoCo so much.
The machine includes it's own ROM for the character generator instead of using the built in data.
It uses a General Instruments AY sound chip.
The breakout at the top left (from the front) on the back is for an RS-232 board add on and there is a header inside to connect it but I've never seen one for sale outside of a Japanese auction site.
They sold an expansion box that let you add expansion RAM,and Exended Basic carts and it included a disk drive interface on the back.
The only one I've ever seen was in the ebay auction I won.

The only game I was able to find for it on a cart was Canyon Climber and it looked and played exactly like the CoCo version.

I wish I could give you some links but I lost those along with my laptop.

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Does somebody have a scan of the N-60 BASIC Reference Manual?

There only scans of the User's Guide and the BASIC Quick Reference.

But the BASIC is very similar to the TRS-80 Color Computer, so if those aren't enough, you could check the CoCo manuals for examples of most of the commands.

There are some differences such as the SOUND, and PLAY commands having support for multiple channels, and a few are completely different, but most are pretty close.

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