Floppy Days 121 - NEC PC-6001 and Japanese Computers with Carlos Camacho - Part I

Floppy Days Vintage Computing Podcast

Please donate at: https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays.

Welcome to Floppy Days #121 for December, 2022. And I’m your host, Randy Kindig. Happy holidays to all!

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’re going to take a tiny step back and 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. So, 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.

With me this month 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.

This will be a 2-part episode, due to the amount of material we were able to pull together and length of time it took to go through it.

After that, we’ll return to ZX Spectrum coverage.

As usual, I will also talk a bit about what I have been up to, including an update on the The Great Barn Find of 2022, as well as 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.

Finally, while I usually abstain from talking about monetary support for this podcast, I do want to mention that I have a way for you to help if you have the inclination. I have a page set up at https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays where you can donate. Any funds will be used to defray the cost of managing the podcast as well as acquiring new hardware to talk about. On that topic, I do intend to beef up the various Floppy Days offerings, including some additional content depending on the donation level at Patreon. Look for that as soon as I’ve figured out what I want to offer and how to manage it. I do want to send out a heart-felt thank you for everyone who has already contributed and continues to contribute!

I hope you enjoy the show!

Links Mentioned in the Show:

New Acquisitions

• Tandy M100/T102 items from http://www.ArcadeShopper.com
• Inside Commodore DOS by Richard Immers and Gerald G. Neufeld
• The Personal Computer BASIC S Reference Manual by Donald A. Sordillo
• An Introduction to Electronic Data Processing by Roger Nett and Stanley A Hetzler
• Principles of Compiler Design by Alfred V. Aho and Jeffrey D. Ullman
• A Comparative Study of Programming Languages by Bryan Higman
• Assembly Language Programming for the IBM Personal Computer by David J. Bradley

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/
• 31st Annual “Last” CocoFest - April 22-23, 2023 - Holiday Inn & Suites Chicago, Carol Stream, IL - https://www.glensideccc.com/cocofest/
• Indy Classics presented by Indy Vintage Computer Club - late April - near Indy airport - TBA

Feedback

• Byte High No Limit Podcast episode - https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/byte-high-no-limit/id1649091845?i=1000590462992
• You can play the Elite game yourself here - https://www.bbcelite.com/hacks/teletext_elite.html

Co-host Interview

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