This professional computer from NEC was a very nice system at the time. With its high resolution graphics (640 x 475) and its large disk capacity (1 MB), it sure was impressive in 1982!
Jeremiah S. Junken reports :
I actually have one of these which still works. By default, it runs CPM/86, there was a UNIX available, and MS-DOS available. Mine had an external 10MB HDD. The software included "benchmark" word processor, VisiCalc and dBase II.
The major things worth nothing about this otherwise unremarkable machine were it's relative speed, the fact that the lights would dim slightly when it was turned on, and that, in the year 2002, it still works. :-)
Gary McCray adds:
I actually still have a working one of these also. Actually, it was pretty remarakable when it came out for its high resolution graphics capability using a (at the time) powerful NEC 7220 Graphics controller chip which formed the base strategy for virtually every other graphics controller since.
Unfortunately very little software was available that took advantage of its graphics capability. Also it was featured in one of the stupidist full page ads ever produced and ran for months with a giant hand covering it up and the admonition "The Computer The Competition Doesnt Want You to See" and a suggestion to write away for information on it (see 'Adverts' section). If that wasn't stupid enough, you couldn't actually get any information on it from either writing or calling.
It is remarkably well made and was extremely powerful and reliable in the time it was built (weighs over 80 lb). But a combination of truly stupid advertising and lack of easy access doomed it in the US to a very small group. It fared much better in Japan understandably, and surprisingly in Australia (no giant hand I guess). I developed graphics authoring programs for it that sold successfully in both Japan and Australia.
We need more info about this computer ! If you designed, used, or have more info about this system,
please send us pictures or anything you might find useful.
Hi, I actually have one of these with the monochrome screen. It still goes and the disk drives spin when I put a disk in, but sadly I have no operating disk, just sixty odd disks containing some old data by the looks of them, and perhaps one or two programs.
Monday 7th June 2010
Stephen (New Zealand)
Comments from a NASA/GISS senior scientists regarding the NEC APC: The NEC APC used Intel's newest 8086 chip, a 16-bit processor at 4.3 MHz. In most of our APC's we later added a NEC graphics board and an 8087 coprocessor for mathematical calculations. I wrote subroutines in 8086 assembly language to drive the APC's graphics board. We made latitude-longitude color plots and contour plots. [We also used a] tripod and Nikon camera and shot color slides from the APC screen; I still have some in my desk drawer. Later, Bob S. and I wrote software to drive an early IBM color ink jet printer from the APC.
Wednesday 9th July 2008
Mark Chandler (New York, NY)
Most of the top scientists at NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies had these computers on their desks throughout the 1980's for imaging and analysis of global climate model output (the climate simulations were run on IBM mainframes). Much of the climate model development as well as the analyses of early global warming studies that were done by Jim Hansen and his research group at NASA relied on these computers. The graphics software AND specialized text editors for dealing with the massive volume of Fortran GCM code were written in-house for these NEC APCs. I used them as a graduate student in the late 1980s while at NASA/GISS and there were still working APCs around GISS until about 2000 (but no more).
Tuesday 8th July 2008
Mark Chandler (New York, NY, USA)
NAME
APC
MANUFACTURER
NEC
TYPE
Professional Computer
ORIGIN
Japan
YEAR
1982
BUILT IN LANGUAGE
None
KEYBOARD
Typewriter type, 61 key + 25 key numeric/cursor pad + 22 function keys
CPU
NEC UPD-8086
SPEED
5 Mhz
CO-PROCESSOR
NEC 7220 graphic chip, socket for a math co-processor
RAM
128 KB standard, 640 KB max.
VRAM
Unknown
ROM
4 KB ROM, 4 KB battery-backed CMOS RAM
TEXT MODES
80 columns x 25 lines + 1 status line (8x19 dots character matrix)
GRAPHIC MODES
640 x 475 pixels
COLORS
8
SOUND
Buzzer
SIZE / WEIGHT
48.3 (W) x 61 (D) x 35.5 (H) cm / heavy!
I/O PORTS
1 or 2 x RS232 up to 19.200 baud, 1 x Parallel
BUILT IN MEDIA
2 x 8'' floppy disk drives (243 KB or 1 MB) Optional hard-disk (9 or 18 MB formatted)
OS
CP/M-86, UNIX and MS DOS in option
POWER SUPPLY
PSU built-in
PERIPHERALS
2nd RS-232 port, 32-bit floating point unit, Line drawing graphics subsystem, Very high resolution (1024x1024) , IBM emulation software, SDLC communication procedure
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