5 ms·

I had a non-PC PC -- a Tandy 2000. It was the first machine I ever programmed Lisp on. There were lots of these back in the day -- systems with x86 processors

I had a non-PC PC -- a Tandy 2000. It was the first machine I ever programmed Lisp on. There were lots of these back in the day -- systems with x86 processors that attempted to fill the PC's niche and even ran DOS but were subtly incompatible. In the early 80s the IBM PC was not the clear winner yet, and the BIOS hadn't been reverse-engineered, so there were attempts to come up with similar, but not quite compatible, designs to compete in the same market. By the release of the PC/AT, the IBM architecture was pretty much unstoppable in its dominance. The Japanese PC-incompatibles, like the NEC PC-88 and PC-98 series, hung on for a bit longer for a couple of reasons: 1) as explained in the article, displaying Japanese hiragana, katakana, and kanji had high resolution requirements that none of the standard IBM graphics adapters could really match until about the time VGA came out, and there was poor support in MS-DOS until the late 80s or so 2) the Japanese liked their special, idiosyncratic, very Japanese computer designs. To the latter, there was an episode of Pretty Samy (a Tenchi Muyo spin off and magical girl parody) in which the villain was Biff Standard, a glasses-wearing software magnate who wanted to standardize all the world's software. Obviously he was supposed to be Bill Gates, and there was a rising tide of anti-Microsoft sentiment at the time in the West as well... but the episode came out shortly after the release of Windows 95, the first consumer version of Windows to natively support Unicode and international encodings without a special build. After Windows 95 came out in Japan, there was much less of a need for products like the PC-98, and Japanese software could standardize on a plain PC architecture running Windows. Computer enthusiasts at the time felt the malaise of the closing of an era. Even to this day, when you go PC shopping in Japan, you will find there is a hierarchy of preference among brands. Japanese retailers will promote the Japanese brands (e.g., Sony (now Vaio), Fujitsu, Panasonic, NEC) most prominently, followed by the non-Japanese Asian brands (Lenovo, Samsung) and finally the Western brands (HP, Dell). Apple gets a special pass because it's pretty much the Louis Vuitton of electronics.

fredoralive 4y ago
Windows 95 doesn't support Unicode, it only supported the "ANSI" versions of Win32 functions, so you still had a special Japanese version of Windows. It's NT that was Unicode from the start.
- Laforet 4y ago
  Windows 95 did have some limited support for Unicode. However the vast majority of code were written with a particular code page in mind. https://unicodebook.readthedocs.io/operating_systems.html https://unicodebook.readthedocs.io/operating_systems.html Resident programs that transcoded character sets on the fly were a flourishing business back then and is still occasionally required to run some older binaries.
- anthk 4y ago
  W95 and W98 had an Unicode addon.
- numpad0 4y ago
  Besides Windows until around Vista were language specific, you couldn’t switch language but had to clean install a specific desired versions of the OS, be it French or Italian or Japanese builds. Also I’ve heard that NT is all UTF-16 internally, but the default codepage for Japanese builds and locales was always CP932(Shift_JIS) 2-byte encoding, until Windows 10 1903 or so.
  - fomine3 4y ago
    CP932 is still the default on Windows 11 22H2. Changing it causes massive breaking backward compatibility for local legacy software
Laforet 4y ago
Wait, was Pretty Sammy actually a parody of its genre? Granted I have not seen it again on more than 20 years, but I have always remembered it as a magical girl show played straight.
kitsunesoba 4y ago
> Apple gets a special pass because it's pretty much the Louis Vuitton of electronics. Based on my observations, in the 90s and early 00s before Apple had become more of a lifestyle/fashion-oriented brand, in Japan there was a small but enthusiastic fanbase. There were a few models of Mac that were sold only or mostly in Japan, and when I was roaming the web in search of Mac software and tweaks back in the late 90s I remember encountering Japanese websites at a greater frequency than I did non-English sites of any other language (if I recall, French was the runner-up). That said I've not had much of this corroborated by anybody who lived in Japan during that timespan so I don't have a full picture. When I lived there in the early 10s I did see a number of old (10+ years) Macs in use in places like reception desks though.
- bitwize 4y ago
  My observations are based on when I went in 2011, by which point Apple was beginning to establish itself as a fashion brand. Apple computers did attract a small enthusiastic user base in Japan before it became a fashion brand -- and again, the traces of this are visible in anime as well! In Pretty Samy, the OS Tenchi and his friends prefer is called "Pineapple Mach 8", in reference to Mac OS 8. In the psychological thriller Perfect Blue, main character Mima is seen being shown how to use a Mac to get online by her manager, Rumi. And my favorite example: one of the books seen on Noriko's shelf in the first episode of Gunbuster is called "Wozniak talks about the Mac". The Amiga, by contrast, was almost invisible to the Japanese as far as I can tell. One exception was Fumito Ueda, an Amiga fan who would go on to develop games like Ico and Shadow of the Colossus for Sony. Perhaps that is why his games have that haunting aesthetic quality, similar to Amiga favorites like Another World and Shadow of the Beast.
  - kitsunesoba 4y ago
    For Apple-adjacent references in anime, Serial Experiments Lain is hard to beat. It's full of them. Among other things, Lain's computer looks a lot like a Twentieth Anniversary Mac, her classmate has a CRT iMac lookalike, and most computers in the show's universe run Copland OS (named after Apple's canceled Classic Mac OS rewrite). There's a nice 90s-web-style page outlaying the many references here: https://www.cjas.org/~leng/apple-lain.htm https://www.cjas.org/~leng/apple-lain.htm
Tor3 4y ago
Well.. it's not entirely without reason that Japanese retailers promote Japanese brands. I bought a NEC laptop in Japan some years ago, and I haven't been able to find an equivalent one anywhere else since then. Screen: 13.3" Battery: 10 hours (and yes it works in practice) Weight: 730 grams. And very thin. 2440xsomething display. That weight.. and battery time.. I didn't have to bring a charger so it was so easy and lightweight to carry to a day-long hacking session at the coffee shop. And the Japanese non-US keyboard gave me enough keys to remap to my normal non-US layout. Super happy with that one. I actually bought an almost similar NEC for my wife, the difference is only that hers has "just" HD resolution, and it has a (very functional) touch screen, and can be wrapped around to make a tablet (mine can open up 180 degrees, i.e. flat), and it's slightly heavier - just above 800 grams. The negative with both is that the built-in sound is weak and thin. But one fatal evening I managed to feed one of the USB ports with 12V, via a non-protected powered USB hub (damn adapters looking exactly the same..), which blew something inside which I never managed to fix (I should add that another plus of the laptop is that is's so easy to open, if you want to e.g. upgrade the M.2) But I can't find an equivalent replacement outside Japan. Going back there soon I hope, so will look for the current model of my old one. My (European) company-provided laptop is also Japanese: Fujitsu. In general it's very good, though not as lightweight as my private NEC. In the past we used HP and other brands of laptop at work, I much prefer the Fujitsu.
- simne 4y ago
  > But I can't find an equivalent replacement outside Japan. This is other side of industrialized West, in East Europe typical to make fixes impossible in West. For example, formally, services prohibited to solder anything on main board, they should only change board (module) for working one. In East Europe normal to solder even CPU. Unfortunately, soldering quality is very depend on human, so I cannot guarantee success, but it may worth to try.

fredoralive 4y ago

Windows 95 doesn't support Unicode, it only supported the "ANSI" versions of Win32 functions, so you still had a special Japanese version of Windows. It's NT that was Unicode from the start.

Laforet 4y ago
Windows 95 did have some limited support for Unicode. However the vast majority of code were written with a particular code page in mind. https://unicodebook.readthedocs.io/operating_systems.html https://unicodebook.readthedocs.io/operating_systems.html Resident programs that transcoded character sets on the fly were a flourishing business back then and is still occasionally required to run some older binaries.
anthk 4y ago
W95 and W98 had an Unicode addon.
numpad0 4y ago
Besides Windows until around Vista were language specific, you couldn’t switch language but had to clean install a specific desired versions of the OS, be it French or Italian or Japanese builds. Also I’ve heard that NT is all UTF-16 internally, but the default codepage for Japanese builds and locales was always CP932(Shift_JIS) 2-byte encoding, until Windows 10 1903 or so.
- fomine3 4y ago
  CP932 is still the default on Windows 11 22H2. Changing it causes massive breaking backward compatibility for local legacy software

Laforet 4y ago

Wait, was Pretty Sammy actually a parody of its genre? Granted I have not seen it again on more than 20 years, but I have always remembered it as a magical girl show played straight.

kitsunesoba 4y ago

> Apple gets a special pass because it's pretty much the Louis Vuitton of electronics. Based on my observations, in the 90s and early 00s before Apple had become more of a lifestyle/fashion-oriented brand, in Japan there was a small but enthusiastic fanbase. There were a few models of Mac that were sold only or mostly in Japan, and when I was roaming the web in search of Mac software and tweaks back in the late 90s I remember encountering Japanese websites at a greater frequency than I did non-English sites of any other language (if I recall, French was the runner-up). That said I've not had much of this corroborated by anybody who lived in Japan during that timespan so I don't have a full picture. When I lived there in the early 10s I did see a number of old (10+ years) Macs in use in places like reception desks though.

bitwize 4y ago
My observations are based on when I went in 2011, by which point Apple was beginning to establish itself as a fashion brand. Apple computers did attract a small enthusiastic user base in Japan before it became a fashion brand -- and again, the traces of this are visible in anime as well! In Pretty Samy, the OS Tenchi and his friends prefer is called "Pineapple Mach 8", in reference to Mac OS 8. In the psychological thriller Perfect Blue, main character Mima is seen being shown how to use a Mac to get online by her manager, Rumi. And my favorite example: one of the books seen on Noriko's shelf in the first episode of Gunbuster is called "Wozniak talks about the Mac". The Amiga, by contrast, was almost invisible to the Japanese as far as I can tell. One exception was Fumito Ueda, an Amiga fan who would go on to develop games like Ico and Shadow of the Colossus for Sony. Perhaps that is why his games have that haunting aesthetic quality, similar to Amiga favorites like Another World and Shadow of the Beast.
- kitsunesoba 4y ago
  For Apple-adjacent references in anime, Serial Experiments Lain is hard to beat. It's full of them. Among other things, Lain's computer looks a lot like a Twentieth Anniversary Mac, her classmate has a CRT iMac lookalike, and most computers in the show's universe run Copland OS (named after Apple's canceled Classic Mac OS rewrite). There's a nice 90s-web-style page outlaying the many references here: https://www.cjas.org/~leng/apple-lain.htm https://www.cjas.org/~leng/apple-lain.htm

Tor3 4y ago

Well.. it's not entirely without reason that Japanese retailers promote Japanese brands. I bought a NEC laptop in Japan some years ago, and I haven't been able to find an equivalent one anywhere else since then. Screen: 13.3" Battery: 10 hours (and yes it works in practice) Weight: 730 grams. And very thin. 2440xsomething display. That weight.. and battery time.. I didn't have to bring a charger so it was so easy and lightweight to carry to a day-long hacking session at the coffee shop. And the Japanese non-US keyboard gave me enough keys to remap to my normal non-US layout. Super happy with that one. I actually bought an almost similar NEC for my wife, the difference is only that hers has "just" HD resolution, and it has a (very functional) touch screen, and can be wrapped around to make a tablet (mine can open up 180 degrees, i.e. flat), and it's slightly heavier - just above 800 grams. The negative with both is that the built-in sound is weak and thin. But one fatal evening I managed to feed one of the USB ports with 12V, via a non-protected powered USB hub (damn adapters looking exactly the same..), which blew something inside which I never managed to fix (I should add that another plus of the laptop is that is's so easy to open, if you want to e.g. upgrade the M.2) But I can't find an equivalent replacement outside Japan. Going back there soon I hope, so will look for the current model of my old one. My (European) company-provided laptop is also Japanese: Fujitsu. In general it's very good, though not as lightweight as my private NEC. In the past we used HP and other brands of laptop at work, I much prefer the Fujitsu.

simne 4y ago
> But I can't find an equivalent replacement outside Japan. This is other side of industrialized West, in East Europe typical to make fixes impossible in West. For example, formally, services prohibited to solder anything on main board, they should only change board (module) for working one. In East Europe normal to solder even CPU. Unfortunately, soldering quality is very depend on human, so I cannot guarantee success, but it may worth to try.