Nina KalininaNov 24, 2023

Okay, folks, as you know, I'm watching an anime "16-bit sensation", a show about NEC PC-98 nostalgia. It made me power up my PC-9821 Aile and boot into DOS/V, and finally try to launch some high-end PC-98 games. And I am speechless. Even on an LCD screen from mid-90s, the art is legendary.

PC-98 series is a special beast. Conceived by NEC as a business computer, the first models were based on Intel's powerful 8086 (the year was 1982). Unlike IBM PC clones, PC-98 supported Japanese out of the box, with complicated input system and thousands of kanji. To make the kanji look good, or, rather, at least minimally readable, the computer's graphics was 640x400 in 16 colours.

As you can imagine, adding Japanese support to a regular PC is hard. No one could do it, and NEC PC-98 became the biggest thing.

For PC games, it made all the difference.

🧵

#pc98 #retrocomputing

Show threadLuci Bitchface AngerfootFeb 4

@nina_kali_nina casually invents the world’s first graphics accellerator chip

(μPD7220)

Show threadNina KalininaFeb 5
@bri7 til
Show threadLuci Bitchface AngerfootFeb 5

@nina_kali_nina the apple macintosh, with its revolutionary software rendered black and white bitmap display came out

four
years
later

Show threadARGVMI~1.PIF

@bri7

The Mac's graphics hardware was interesting not because of how many pixels it pushed per second but because:

1. square pixels, and
2. pixel density is exactly ½ that of the Apple ImageWriter printer.

This wasn't amazing for gaming (and Apple spent several years actively discouraging game development), but it was a big deal for desktop publishing. The Mac was the one true platform for desktop publishing until the late 1990s.

@nina_kali_nina

Feb 5 at 2:37amWeb
Show threadLuci Bitchface AngerfootFeb 5
@argv_minus_one @nina_kali_nina are you saying the image writer had 144ppi?
Show threadARGVMI~1.PIFFeb 5

@bri7

Yes.

@nina_kali_nina