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New Japanese machines

I recently got two very cool 8-bit Japanese machines for my collection:
– Sharp X1-C (CZ-801C)
– Toshiba Pasopia 7

Both are in very good condition as you can see in the pictures. I was also able to grab two great games for the X1:
– The Castle
– Front Line

Here are some screen shots of the boxes and the games running – these were taken when the X1 was connected via the RF box so quality is not great. I need to get some new pics with my new RGB monitor. If you know of any Pasopia 7 software anywhere to be downloaded please let me know!

The Castle:



Front Line:




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TO 8D software

I was finally able to get my hands on some TO 8D software. I got ahold of two packages: a game collection in disk that has Green Beret, Runway, Supper Tennis and Monopoly; and a Logo cartridge, the good old Turtle programming language. Here is how these look like (notice that once I boot with a cart inserted I get a new start up option):

The games are fun. Green Beret feels a lot like the Spectrum version. Monopoly has great graphics but it takes a bit to draw the screen. Runway looks simplistic but it actually plays very nicely. I couldn’t really do much with Logo because I need to find a syntax reference – darn turtle only speaks French 🙂

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Alphatronic news

So I have finally found a disk drive for my Royal / Triumph-Adler Alphatronic PC. Got it for a decent price and it is supposed to be working fine. More updates once I receive it.

Also on the Alphatronic front, I found an interesting site from the UK with some good info and pics, and an old forum entry that describes the purpose of the internal dip switches:

1 2 3
ON ON ON International
OFF ON ON German
ON OFF ON USA
OFF OFF ON French
ON ON OFF English
OFF ON OFF Italian
ON OFF OFF Spain
OFF OFF OFF reserved

4
OFF Serial printer
ON Parallel Printer

5
OFF NTSC
ON PAL

I am still looking for any disk image for this system. Now that I have the disk drive I can at least try out CP/M programs and see if those work.

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New keyboards

I wasn’t really happy with my keyboards for the X68000 and FM Towns. So after hunting for a decent deal on Yahoo Japan, I found these two:

The first is a X68000 compact keyboard, which was released along with the X68000 XVI compact I believe. It is basically new and it is an awesome keyboard. The second is a full size FM Towns keyboard. I am not totally sure if it was the original keyboard for my model but it does look a lot better than my previous grey keyboard. It is a bit yellowed but the keys themselves are in very good condition. Here is how my Towns set up looks like now:

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Moosehead!

I got a pretty unusual addition to my collection recently: a Silicon Graphics O2 (originally known as the “Moosehead” project). This is a beatiful machine. I am a total UNIX newbie so if anyone out there has good recommendations of sites please let me know. I am mostly looking for any cool software (the system came with the bare IRIX 6.5 install).

Here is a pic of the box along with the original keyboard:

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Alphatronic PC

I had the Alphatronic PC in my collection for a while but just got around posting the page now. This is an interesting machine but I really need more info about it – anything from where to download software, how to make a cassette cable or maybe find a disk drive…

I took a bunch of pictures of the machine and posted here. Enjoy!

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Turbo-R

I finally gave up my long search for a Turbo-R bargain. It is just impossible. So I sold a few things and got me a great looking Turbo-R ST. Everything works and I am having a blast with it.

It is kind of funny though how the latter panasonic machines are mostly the same case with only minor cosmetic changes. Check out how the ST compares to the WSX:

Honestly the WSX looks a bit nicer in my opinion…