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First post, by thepirategamerboy12

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Oldbie

So, I'm not sure how many of you are familiar with this computer line, but it's worth a shot. There is a dedicated PC-98 forum, but hardly anybody posts on it at all, so it wasn't really worth bothering with. Anyways, I just have some PC-98 related questions and hopefully some of you can answer them. I've been getting very interested in the line as of late and want to learn a bit more about it before I pursue getting a model.

So, here we go:

1. Does it matter much if it only has one floppy drive? The model I'm most interested in is the PC-9821Cx2. I've noticed some games I've tried so far like 4D Driving and Warau Salesman require both disks to be in two drives at the same time to run if you're playing from floppies. This actually leads me into...

2. How do you go about installing games to the hard drive that don't actually have install programs? I've tried so far 4D Driving, Warau Salesman, and Sokoban Perfect by copying them to folders under A:\GAMES and none of them worked properly. 4D Driving gives me a disk R/W error, WS usually crashes the machine and at most depending on what I run plays the intro theme and goes back to the DOS prompt, and SP always crashed the computer after the company logos. #1 wouldn't matter much if I could figure this out.

3. Are there ways to disable CPU cache to slow down some games? Stock Setmul doesn't work on the PC-98.

4. Could there be a way to get the MS-DOS starter pack adapted for the PC-98's MS-DOS to save on memory usage? I tried modifying it and still couldn't get the menu to work.

5. Does the PC-9821Cx2 have 86 sound integrated?

6. What video output does PC-9821Cx2 use? VGA? The video out on the back looks like VGA to me, but I'm not entirely sure.

7. And lastly, does the PC-9821Cx2 use proprietary mouse/keyboard connections or does it use PS/2 and/or serial?

So, that's all for now. Hopefully some of you can answer these. I know it's a lot, but I really want to know more before I get more serious about getting one. Thanks.

Last edited by thepirategamerboy12 on 2018-09-18, 00:40. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 1 of 2, by Jo22

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l33t++

yawetaG and me had some talk about the PC-98 in another thread some time ago: Timeline of MS-DOS for NEC PC98 and more
While it's not exactly what you're looking for, it may provide one or moe clues (useful links ?)
That beeing said, I'm still leanring about the PC-98 so please don't mind if there's little misinformation here and there
(I grew up with another type of Japanese computer).

Best regards,
Jo22

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