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The Origin of the Species: NEC PC-8001 FDD Adapter
NEC moved into personal computing relatively quickly. After the hobbyist and industrial success of the TK-80, they produced a handful of “better TK-80s,” which didn’t do as well as the original. Ultimately, they developed a whole new system: the 1979 NEC PC-8001. And boy, did they ever nail it.
Since the back of the PC-8001 is somewhat open – you can see all the guts from the holes for the edge connectors – I decided that it would be a good idea to look inside for spider nests, exploded components, and the usual kind of crap that falls into a computer when it’s been in storage for a long time. Enri, the same helpful person who gave SG-1000 and Pyuuta schematics freely, also provides a lot of PC-8001 data including the info on EXTON and a useful page about the 80S31 interface to add more context. I finished this manual labour off with a couple doses of Deoxit to help clean, lubricate, and, if you believe the marketing, add a layer of mystery goop to protect the expansion edge fingers.
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