Thank you! You've found a goldmine of information! ^^
I'm currently reading that adverts category and the Oak video chipset faq..

yawetaG wrote:

While digging for specs on Epson's non-PC-98 x86 systems, I discovered something very interesting: they sold Intel 486-based and above systems in North America that can be clocked down to 8086 speeds using a similar method as their Japan-only PC-98 compatibles! Better yet, the manuals and specs and sometimes drivers are available on their US site...just go to the support section, click "Browse by product category", then "Other products" and select the appropriate option. Now this is a manufacturer that understands what "legacy support means". 😎

Argh...two months later they've revamped their site and the contents on old hardware is gone... 😢

yawetaG wrote:

Argh...two months later they've revamped their site and the contents on old hardware is gone... 😢

Oh, well, that's sad. 🙁

But at least the content is still on the servers! 😀

Here's the manual for the "Epson Endeavor 486C", for example.
https://files.support.epson.com/pdf/en4c__/en4c__u1.pdf

A list of old Epson products can still be retrived from Archive.org.
http://web.archive.org/web/20150509005728/htt … foType=Overview

I'm confident, with a little bit of googling,
it's still possible to save most of the manuals and datasheets.

Edit: Edited the title, since the thread has evolved. 😀

Found a little page about PC98 (some kind of a buyer's guide):
http://japan-retro.de/pc98faq.html
Translation to English

Hello again! Just found another interesting page.
It's about Windows/386 for PC-9800 Machines.
http://blog.livedoor.jp/kaosekken999/archives/52113111.html
English translation

Here's a page listing various operating systems for PC-98 and PC/AT:

http://island.geocities.jp/cklouch/column/sofmus/os.htm

And here's what I've found out about Windows95/98/98SE/NT until now: Epson AT-550L

What's also interesting is that the first version of Windows with proper USB support on PC-98 systems was Windows 2000.

Update. Dos-J Plus (DOSJP), the Japanese font utility for western DOSes, seems to work OK on 286 machines with EMU386 beeing loaded.
This is nice for DOS/V games, which do otherwise run just fine on pre-386 machines.

Quick update. Found a website which describes the different sound boards for the PC-98 series.

http://island.geocities.jp/cklouch/column/pc9 … as/pc980186.htm

Translation : English / German

Long story short: Both PC-9801-26 and PC-9801-86 were popular standard boards.
The PC-9801-26 ('85) featured an OPN, while the PC-9801-86 ('93) had an OPNA synthesizer chip.

In contrast, the PC-9801-118 from 1995 had an OPL3, just like the western Sound Blasters/PAS16s of their time.
According to this source, it also had got an YMF 297 for backwards compatibility*.
It was probably made to provide better support for the upcoming Windows 95.

(*Speaking under correction)

Edit: According to this source, the YMF297 was a combo chip.
It included functionality of both YMF289(OPL3-LV) and YMF288(OPN3-L).

Little update. I did take some video recordings of a few DOS/V games, incl. openings w/ OPL2/YM3812 musical score.
- For comparison with their more popular PC98 releases found on the web..
*Link*

Small update. I covered a few PC98 specfic things in my personal YT channel.
Such as running Neko Project II on OS/2 Warp 4, for example.
It has footage of Kyarukan, too, a hentai memory game, albeit censored (kids safe, I apologize).
So you may like to make a quick visit there (I'm not getting money for that, it's just a hobby), hm ? .. 😀

FWIW, DOS/V was shipped on the Sega Teradrive, a joint project between Sega and IBM which, other than being able to play Mega Drive games, is a normal PC/AT compatible 286-10 machine with a WDC VGA chip.

A device driver is loaded in config.sys to switch to the VGA kana/kanji display mode, and every DOS game I've tried runs just fine in this environment, with the exception that "ANSI" colour CP437 text doesn't display (e.g. 90s post-game "this is shareware" screens, or the initialization screen of Keen 4-6).

Hey, thank's a lot for your reply! The Tera Drive seems awesome!
Reminds me a bit of the old Mega PC from old Europe, but I hear there are many differences.

If you're interested in Mega Drive programming, check out BasiEgaXorz.
That's a BASIC compiler for the Sega Mega Drive, 60Hz-only of course (the creator hates PAL). 😉

Speaking of DOS/V, I once got a real copy of MS-DOS/V version 6, including manual und diskettes.
It wasn't in the best conditions, but I gratefully could save the disks. ^^

There's a lot of background information in respect to DOS/V, I believe.
For example, V5 does use hardware-wrapparound of the VGA,
whereas V6.xx takes care of it on its own. Or so I heard.

Little update. Got a copy of the Win/V demo version (honestly!).
As you found out on page one, it adds Japanese characters to English/western copies of Win 3.1x.

"This is a special Internet demo version of Win/V.
It is fully functional except for the following limitations:
- Only one bitmap system font size.
- English application helpers disabled.
- Kanji TrueType Fonts cannot be added."

I've attached it to this posting, hope that's okay.

It might be useful for getting Japanese games or emulators running..

Small update.
Found another interesting site with lots of DOS/V and JWIN games listings.
Note it's a text list only and it's 21+. So please only visit if you can handle it. 😉

Little update. Found another Japanese font utility for DOS on the site mentioned before.
It might be useful for those of you that have trouble with DOS-J Plus. I'll attach it here for preservation purposes.