1985, the appearance of PC-980 1V series marked the real arrival of the Japanese PC98 era. PC980 1VM adopts V30 10MHz CPU produced by NEC, and uses GRCG/EGC enhanced graphics chip. The display ability is enhanced to 640*400* 16 *4 images (4096 color palette). 3.5-inch floppy drive and 5-inch floppy drive have become the standard configuration of PC980 1 at the same time, and the popularity of hard disks has begun to increase. At the same time, the first popular PC980 1 (there was a rare 9PSG PC-9801-Kloc-0/4 before, and the popularity was very low) sound source card (3FM+3PSG)PC-980 1-26 was also sold in large quantities. At the same time, the price of PC980 1 system began to drop to a level comparable to that of 8-bit PC880 1 series. Soon, PC980 1 replaced PC880 1 series as the mainstream model.
PC980 1VM/VX performance parameters
CPU:v 30 10 MHz/80286 10 MHz
Memory: 640KB+ 1MB (expandable to 16MB)
Display resolution: 640*400* 16 colors *4 pictures.
Floppy drive: 5-inch or 3-inch 2HD floppy drive *2 (two external 2DD/2HD floppy drives are optional).
Hard disk: (optional) 10-40M SASI, 100M SCSI PC-980 1 was strongly challenged before it became mainstream. 1987, Sharp introduced the X68000 named "Personal Workstation". X68000, which is more inclined to entertainment, can display 256 or even 65536 colors at 512. It has built-in YM2 15 1 FM sound source and has some hardware 2D acceleration capabilities (frame buffering and scrolling) necessary for game consoles (PS:x68 series). However, because the CPU used in X68000 is MC68000, which is completely incompatible with x86 instruction set, and the software portability is extremely low, the number of applications and games on X68000 is small, so it is difficult to compete with PC980 1. But a 32-bit version of X68030 (using the 32-bit series CPU of MC68C030) is always released later.
By 1989, some models of PC980 1 have been equipped with 386CPU and become 32-bit computers, and their performance has been further improved. This year, Fujitsu launched a powerful cutting-edge model FM TOWNS. Fmtown comes standard with 386DX 16MHz CPU and CD-ROM drive, which is very powerful, and can realize 16-bit color display at low resolution, and has the usual 2D acceleration capabilities such as frame buffering, 8PCM sound source and CD sound source, which is enough to compete with any model of PC980 1. However, the architecture of TOWNS is very complicated, and a DOS system solidified in ROM is used to start CDROM. However, the complexity and compatibility of the main OS-TOWNS OS are much worse than that of the dedicated MS-DOS of PC980 1. Therefore, although it has been adhered to the Pentium 1 era, and even transplanted Windows95, it has not been very popular.
During this period, PC-980 1 reached its peak. In Japan, when people mention PC, they naturally think of PC980 1. In the early 1990s, IBM returned to the Japanese market with its PC/AT switch and Japanese-culture MS-DOS system "DOS/V" (by the way, in the early days of PC980 1, IBM introduced a PC/AT switch JX with Japanese display hardware in it, which contained software such as JX-Word, the predecessor of Taro, but failed for various reasons). This has greatly disrupted the PC market in Japan, and the PC/AT replacement with price advantage has gradually eroded the market share of PC980 1 series. With the release of Windows 3.0, the resolution of 640*400 of the old PC980 1 series can no longer fully meet the requirements of Windows, so NEC introduced its successor PC980 1 series. PC982 1 still adopts the established PC-9800 architecture, but adopts a brand-new graphics chip, which can support the display with 640*480 resolution and high color number. The audio source is enhanced as FM6 audio source +PSG3 audio source +Rhythm6 audio source (PC-980 1-86), and the bus is enhanced as a 32-bit 98 local bus (compared with C, the price of the original PC980 1 series is reduced, the number of expansion slots is reduced, and the IDE bus is used in the hard disk. A few previous generation models (PC980 1BX, etc. ), the final model is PC980 1BX4, published in 1997. In the era of Windows 95, the later PC982 1 became closer to the PC/AT interchange machine, and instead used the PCI bus, IDE hard disk and audio source compatible with SB 16 (in fact, there was a special AWE32), and the CPU also developed from Pentium 1 to Pentium II and III systems using Socket370 interface.
But since the development of PC-9800 architecture, the era of PC/AT exchange plus +Windows system has come to an end all over the world. 1997, NEC launched its own PC/AT switch. In the future, PC-9800 architecture model will no longer be developed as the main model, and the development of PC98 special operating system will only stop when it is transplanted to Windows 2000. In 2000, the final model PC-982 1Ra43 was released. On September 30th, 2003, NEC issued a statement in official website, officially announcing the end of all-round technical support for PC-9800.
In addition, Epson once sold a series of PC-x86 compatible with PC9800 architecture, and developed some special software and hardware for it (Epson's machine has so-called "Epson protection" technology, which makes many software developed/transplanted by NEC unable to run on Epson's machine), and our familiar simulator Anex86 is the simulation of this series.
There are not only PC980 1 and PC982 1 personal computers in PC-9800 architecture, but also graphics workstations and server series PC-H98, pure entertainment PC-98GS and PC-98DO compatible with PC880 1 series, but there are few materials. I won't introduce it in detail (supplementary: the original model of PC-H98 series is 1987 PC-980 1X, which corresponds to the unprecedented resolution of120 * 800 (H mode) at that time. Chinese fonts are all 24*24 lattice, but they are not compatible with the general PC-980 1 program.