Tokugawa Corporate Forums

the games on pc-9801, do they are all compatible with a pc-9821?

and if yes what could be the best model. need at least two FDD 3.5" and a cd-rom drive and HDD

Most games will run perfectly fine on a 9821, as long as you have the right sound board. Most games need an 86 board, but some older games will only work on a 26K board, or special hardware like the Speak board.

For maximum compatibility, you need a desktop. An Xa series desktop with 2 3.5" FDDs, a CD-ROM drive, an 86 board, and a 26K board would be just about perfect. You could also get a MIDI board, but personally I like FM synth better. A stock Ce series desktop would also work really well.

Laptops will have compatibility problems. All laptops just have 1 FDD. Later laptop models don't even include FM boards, so they're useless for games. Even the laptops that include FM boards can have compatibility problems with the sound drivers used by some games.

thanks for the recomendation

Turns out I was wrong. Several sources say the 86 board is absolutely 100% backwards-compatible with the 26K board.

On the other hand, later boards like the 118 board and various "expanded FM" boards are definitely NOT 100% backwards-compatible with the 86 board. The 118 and later sound boards were designed for Windows, so there are numerous problems with DOS games (speaking from personal experience).

good it will be more easy to fine one now. thanks

and is it posible to find a adapter RGB analog 15 pins to vga 15 pins to make it work on another monitor or is the pc-9821 are compatible with the same monitor i use for my pc-88?

Like this?

Sanwa Supply sells a HD (3 way) 15 pin -> Dsub 15 pin adapter. The part number is AD-D15NE.

Most 9801s and early 9821s use an HD (3 way) 15 pin connector. It has 2 rows of 15 pins. (Is this what the PC-8801 uses? I don't know.)

Later 9801s and 9821s use the standard D-sub 15 (VGA) connector. It is smaller than the HD (3 way), and has 3 rows of 15 pins. This is the standard analog connector used on modern LCD displays. However, most modern monitors won't work, because they don't support the 24/31 kHz horizontal resolution used by the PC98.

Lastly...

Not everything is going to work on a 9821. Some games will have graphic glitches, some games will freeze if your hard drive is too big, some games only work on a 386 processor. Even if you have an 86 board, some games won't recognize it because of the on-board sound source. There are various tricks and utilities you can use, but some games just will not work.

Someone once said that you need at least 3 models to play every PC98 game.
PC-9801 RA series - for really old games.
PC-9821 Mate A series - built-in 86 board, high compatibility. (expensive!!)
PC-9821 X-Mate Pentium or Valuestar - for recent stuff and ports of Western games.

Honestly, emulators are a better option. The recent unofficial builds of Neko Project II are fantastic - the emulation is absolutely perfect in many cases.

Also the physical space issue.. one more computer and I'll start sleeping over the dogs. Really, I prefer emulators for that sole fact. Not to mention the hard-to-get titles and overall floppy disk condition (they're quite old by now)

yeah the pc-88 use the 15 pins 2 rows

if i say that i want to play

eiyuu densetsu 1 2 3 4
popful mail
farland story series
xak series

is there a machine who can play all these games?

so pc-98 use 24/31 khz. is there any monitor has been found to use this frequency?

OK, then a PC-88 monitor should probably work.
Sharp, Eizo, and IO Data also made some PC-98 compatible LCD monitors. They're difficult to find, though.

As for the games,

Eiyuu Densetsu 1-3 - OK (FDD)
Eiyuu Densetsu 4 - OK (HDD)
Popful Mail - OK (FDD)

Older Falcom games usually require DOS 3 for a hard drive install, but DOS 3 is difficult or impossible to install on a 9821. Booting from the floppies works.

Farland series - OK, with minor glitch

In some Farland games, the stat windows don't appear during a battle animation. But it's still playable, and you can see the stat windows by changing battle animations to simple mode. Farland 5 - Daichi no Kizuna worked fine.

Xak series - OK (FDD)

All tested on a late model 9821. So... everything is playable, but you need
- an 86 board for sound, and optionally a MIDI board (not needed for the original PC-9821 model and the Mate A series)
- 2 FDDs for the games you can't install to the HDD

Some games can be played with 1 FDD, but most stuff assumes 2 FDDs. The problem is, not many 9821s have 2 FDDs, and an FDD expansion kit is extremely rare. If you have at least 16 MB of RAM, you can use virtual floppy drives, but games that use protected memory will not work in a virtual drive.

so forget the pc-9821 and go for a pc-9801. right?

it's ok if i dont have cd-rom drive if games i said early can be found on disk 3 1/2.

have they any HDD in those one?

and at the same time, what is the spec to be able to play most of the game on the pc?

PC-9801 or PC-9821 doesn't really matter, as long as you have an 86 board and 2 FDDs.

The Falcom games can be installed to a hard drive, but they require MS-DOS 3, which is ooooold. MS-DOS 3 doesn't support hard drives larger than 128 MB. Playing from the floppies is easier.

All the games you listed are pretty old (basically ports of PC-8801 games), except for Farland and Eiyuu Densetsu 3-4. A 486 processor and a few MB of RAM is plenty.

But seriously - just play them in an emulator.

Also, you could install them on a emulator (or grab a working HDI) and transfer the files to your physical HD. That way you don't need to mess with MS-DOS 3. I wonder, floppy disks are the easiest (or the only?) way of transfering files to a real PC-98?

yeah, its ok i stay with my emulator.

but is eiyuu densetsu 3 4
farland story

are those game need to be installed or we can play anyway on disk?

That doesn't work, because you still need to format the physical hard drive somehow. MS-DOS 3 uses the FAT12 system, and its format.exe crashes when trying to access large hard drives. At the same time, a hard drive partition formatted by DOS 6 or higher is invisible to MS-DOS 3, and can't be accessed. If your hard drive is less than 2GB, I think it's possible to format a drive with DOS 5 and then install DOS 3, but I haven't tested this.

BTW, floppies are not the only way to transfer files. You could....
1) Attach an internal or external CD-ROM drive and copy files from a burned CD
2) Install a LAN board and set up file sharing with a modern computer
3) Install a USB, IDE, or SCSI board and connect an external hard drive
3) Attach an MO drive
4) Remove the hard drive and connect it to another computer with an IDE or SCSI adapter and a few utilities.
5) Use a serial connection
6) Install a SCSI/IDE-to-CF adapter inside the PC-98 and use a Compact Flash reader to copy files.

yukin,
ED 3 plays from disk. HD install requires DOS 3 or 5, I'm not sure which.
ED 4 can be installed and played, even on DOS 6.2.
All the Farlands can be installed to the hard drive.