9801BX2, worth it?

[SuperDeadite]

So local Hardoff has a BX2 (486x25) with keyboard and mouse for 5,000yen.  I assume it will need a sound board, but beyond that how is it for games?

Mostly interested in stuff like Rusty, Night Slave.  I assume too slow for Doom and Touhou, but local pickup, great condition, and cheap.  Yay or nay?

[RetroPCfan]

In my opinion this model is okay for games and price is really sweet! I once paid about 3000yen for only mouse and keyboard and even much more for shipping ))) 486x25 isn't too bad and may be upgraded with cpu accelerator boards. And afaik this model got IDE HDD interface too. The only serious disadvantage for me is lack of external 1mb FDD connector , i use it for hxc floppy emu and 3.5" external floppy drives but maybe you even don't need it ?  For local pickup great condition and insanely cheap price my answer is Yay! )))

[RobIvy64]

Flame Zapper Kotsujin (one of the best shooters on the platform) will be painfully slow.

[SkyeWelse]

Well I don't know too much about the BX2, but the CPU appears to be a 486SX running at 25Mhz. That's what typically comes standard in my Ce2, which is a popular model in the community. I'm able to run most things on it fairly easily and the YADHI image is perfect for writing to a compact flash card to IDE. Flame Zapper will be slower, but it's still very playable in my opinion. I believe the Touhou's should work fine as well as they do on my Ce2. I think it's a good deal at 5000 yen. I think all of us have easily paid more than that. lol

You may need to get a soundboard for this. I'd recommend going with the PC-9801-86 which has the YM2608 chip that is needed for several games to run 6 channel FM sound. Luckily that is built into the Ce2 machine and several other PC-9821 models during that period of it's life. Since you are in Japan, BEEP-Shop in Akihabara should have both that and a keyboard/mouse. I picked up a keyboard there for myself and a friend for about 3000 each, or just get them off of Yahoo Japan Auctions.

Come on over to the scene! It's becoming a bit larger every day and the PC-98 discord channel seems to be doing well too. I'm still plugging away at adding games to the YADHI 2 image as well and working with a few groups to bring some PC-98 games in English too like EVO - The Theory of Evolution and Brandish 2.

By the way, I watched one of your Youtube videos the other day about the X68000. I'm looking forward to getting mine up and running. It's broken right now though and I apparently didn't do such a hot job fixing the PSU and finding components for it like the Zener diode seems to be rather difficult.

-Thomas

[SuperDeadite]

Picked this up a few weeks ago.  It came with keyboard and mouse, so hard to complain.  But seems to have PSU issues.  Will be taking it to a local repair shop over xmas.

[kamiboy]

Man, what is it with 80's/90's era Japanese PC's and failing PSU's. It is not just capacitors either, they just seems to be generally built very badly.

[SkyeWelse]

Cool, keep us posted on the progress. Always happy to see new interest in the PC-98 scene. Hopefully I can get started with the X68000 scene soon enough.

-Thomas

[Flyingharuka]

You can upgrade by installing the overdrive CPU  like DX2ODP-50 or DX4ODP-75

it's fully support it .

as your says , there no any sound board in it . you need buy 26k compatible  sound board or 86 board for it

I need to remind you, BX2 belongs to a bad model , Before buying, you need to make sure the computer is working properly  , After the transaction, the capacitor on the motherboard , power supply , floppy drive , will be replaced


BX2 uses NEC FD1138T or FD1148T as floppy drives , It's not very convenient to maintenance.