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The (long) story of a special NEC PC-8201A

jamesbeat

Experienced Member
Joined
Apr 19, 2017
Messages
71
Location
Chippewa Falls, WI (Home of Cray Research!)
I was moving some stuff around last night, and I found my old PC-8201A inside my suitcase.

This machine has a story behind it, so I hope you will indulge me a little trip down memory lane...


In 1994, when I was 18, my school sent me on 'Work Experience', which was essentially a two-week unpaid internship.
We got to choose from a list of companies that offered work experience to students, and naturally I chose a computer place - Tempus Computers.

Tempus was based in St. Paul's Square in Birmingham, England.

Here's a street view of the location now (the building with the arches)

https://www.google.com/maps/place/2...a901e24!8m2!3d52.4858714!4d-1.9056137!6m1!1e1

And here's a historical photo of what it looked like before the microcomputer was even invented:

http://epapers.bham.ac.uk/328/1/bb0157.jpg

I found their company records records online, and it looks as though they went out of business two years ago in 2015.

The boss at the time was called 'King'.
I thought at first that everyone was calling him King in a jocular manner because he was the boss, but no, his actual first name was King.

I was working with two engineers.
The main guy was this grumpy fat guy called Mark who drank Coke from a 2-liter bottle all day and burped almost constantly.
The room had a peculiar odor like gravy or something, and I eventually came to realize that it was the smell of his burps.
I used to have to go outside at lunchtime so I could get away from it while I ate.

The other guy was called Chris. He was younger, and was quite friendly.
Unfortunately, he was also extremely racist.
The event that most sticks out in my mind was the time when an Indian or Pakistani gentleman called him for some technical support.
He was being really polite on the phone, but every so often, he would hit the 'mute' button and yell racial slurs into the phone, which he thought was extremely amusing.
Unfortunately for him, he messed up the timing, and accidentally shouted abuse when the phone wasn't muted.
I don't remember him getting into trouble over it, but that was towards the end of my time there so he may have been found out afterwards.
I also remember that he had an email alert which was a poor rendition of the first seven notes of the theme to The 'A' Team. It was terribly done, but I remember being impressed by it at the time.

Chris got me to sign something dodgy too. He was discussing with Mark the idea of forging a signature on some document, and then he said 'I know, let's get James the Lad to sign it'.
This made me extremely suspicious, but I didn't know what do to.
I signed it, but not with my real signature - I just sort of scribbled on the form.
I have no idea what it was, but I could tell from his concerned demeanor that it was something important.

There was also this crazy German guy who worked there, but he was in software not hardware.
One time, he brought in some device that he was having trouble with, and while he was explaining what was wrong with it, he jokingly picked up a cross peen hammer and mimed smashing the machine with it.
Unfortunately, someone was walking behind him at the time, and as he swung the hammer back in mock rage, he smacked the guy right in the center of the forehead with the cross peen part of the hammer!
It was quite nasty too - the guys forehead immediately swelled up and turned black where the hammer had hit, and there was a lot of blood.

Anyway, I did learn a couple of interesting things while I was there.
I could already solder quite well, but Mark taught me a couple of tricks.
I also learned how to erase an eprom with a UV light and reprogram it.
I mentioned the 'A' Team email alert above, but what I didn't mention was that I didn't actually know that email existed until this time.
I didn't realize at the time how important email would become, but I thought it was cool.

The main thing I did there though, and the reason for this story, was to make NEC PC-8201A computers.
Well, not exactly make them...
They had a large number of these machines in various states of disrepair, and it was my job to cannibalize the good parts and assemble working machines from them.
These computers were already pretty old and obsolete, but Tempus had a contract to deliver a number of them to a company that was going to use them for some type of field work.

I had a known-working machine, which was separated into top and bottom halves.
I would disassemble the pile of machines, and plug each one's top and bottom halves into my test specimen and test the display, keyboard etc.
If a machine passed this test, I reassembled it. If a top or bottom half failed, I would reject it and add the good half to my 'good' pile until I got a corresponding half to go with it.

From my reject pile, I would then strip the parts down further and combine them into working tops and bottoms - a good keyboard here, a good screen there etc.

I remember that the machine came in two colors; one was beige, and the other was a dark metallic silver.
I haven't seen any of the latter color when I searched for it on the web, but I do have a battery box to prove I'm not making it up!

I tried to keep halves matched in color so that the customer didn't end up with wierd two-tone machines, but I remember being told not to bother.
I did it anyway, or at least as best I could - I couldn't avoid having a couple of two-tone ones.
I remember the silver colored ones looked rougher than the beige ones, because the silver finish was painted on, and was thus more prone to showing wear and scratches.

After the good parts were assembled into complete machines, I then had to type in a short BASIC program to test the ports.
I plugged in some sort of shop-built dongle, typed in the program, and checked the output.
The program was about 20 lines long, which doesn't sound like much, but when you have no way of getting it into the machine other than manually typing it in to each one, it gets old fast.
I had to do this to around 50 machines, and it took several days.
Not one of the machines failed the test, which made it worse in a way because it made it seem pointless.

I then had to supply each machine with two battery packs.
These were NiCad battery packs containing four AA cells, which interestingly used spring terminals and were thus easily replaceable by the user.

Each machine had to get two battery packs.
To test the NiCad packs, I was literally told to plug them in and see if they worked.
If they didn't, I was to attempt to charge them and try again.
Now I know a little more about rechargeable batteries, I know that this test was next to useless, and I bet a lot of those old batteries didn't hold a decent charge.

The final task was to clean the machines, which consisted of spraying some cleaning foam on a paper towel and giving them a quick wipe. Better than nothing I suppose.

They also didn't care what happened to the leftover parts - there were still some functional parts left over, but since the contract was for a specific number of machines - which included several spare machines - there was no use for the leftover parts.
Other than this specific contract, it was extremely unlikely that they could have sold any of the leftover obsolete machines.

On the last day of my two weeks work experience, I was told to throw these parts out with the rest of the trash.

I wanted to ask if I could keep some of the parts, but I knew I was not allowed to even ask permission.

There were very strict rules about Work Experience placements, one of which is that the company you work for is not allowed to pay you.
They were not even allowed to buy you lunch or cover your travel expenses.

Some companies tried to get around this by giving the student a gift instead of money.
In one case, a student who worked with a jewelry company was given a gold bracelet by the owner.
The owner then immediately offered to buy the bracelet from the student for cash.
To close this loophole, the participating companies were told that they could not pay the student OR give any gifts.

It was drummed into us by our teachers that we were not to accept anything whatsoever from the company we were working for, and that we would be disciplined if we were to ask for anything from the company or its employees.

While everyone was busy with their lunches, I carefully sorted through the pile of good parts that was destined for the dumpster.
I chose the nicest beige shell I could find, the nicest keyboard, the best screen etc. and two battery packs, and kept them separate.

When I took out the trash, I also took the plastic grocery bag that had held my lunch, and I carefully wrapped those parts in it and stashed it at the side of the dumpster.
When I left at the end of the day, I stopped by the dumpster, collected the bag of parts and took them home.

Is taking trash stealing?
Probably not, but even if it is I don't think I will get caught now anyway. Just don't tell anyone, ok? :D

When I got home I assembled the parts. By this time I was an expert and probably could have done it with my eyes closed.
The machine worked perfectly, and I had fun messing around with the BASIC interpreter and the other primitive functions that this machine was capable of.

I moved from England to New York in 2008.
When I went back to visit in 2012, I found the NEC PC-8201A in my Mom's loft.
I put some batteries in it and it powered right up.
I put it in my suitcase and brought it back to the States with me.

Here it is today, 23 years after I saved those parts from the trash and assembled them into a working computer.

NEC PC-8201a.jpg

There was only one beige battery pack left in the parts, so as you can see in the photo, the spare one is the silver painted type.
Sadly, I tried turning the machine on today, and it wouldn't power up.

I guess the time has come for me to open it back up again and see if I can fix it.
Hopefully it's something simple like bad caps and I can get the old girl working again.
 
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Nice story! You'll probably want to take it apart again to remove the old NiCd battery before it leaks over the mainboard. Be careful--even if it isn't flat and still stores a charge, it can still leak (this happened in my Tandy 102).
 
Hmm, I wasn't aware that it had a NiCad battery inside.

I hope that's not the reason that it's not powering up...


I was thinking it would probably be something simple like bad caps - I hope I'm not going to have to deal with a corroded motherboard.
 
Hi James,

GREAT story, I really enjoyed reading it;while having my first cup of tea for day and I promise NOT to tell anyone, about you stealing trash. :cool:

I do wonder if that 'almost brush' with the 'law', hee hee, made you into a 'dumpster diver', in the years that followed, since you would have appreciated the fact some great stuff end in trash bins ?

Was a nice touch adding the Google map and the epaper Pic links. By the way I would not mind now, having the car from the that epaper photo

Await to hear the next chapter, and hope you have no internal damage to the motherboard, especially from any internal leaking battery.
 
Glad you enjoyed it :)

I hope the accounts of the stinky burps and the bleeding head wound didn't put you off your tea...

About that Google Street View thing, you might find it interesting to take a (virtual) stroll around St. Paul's Square.
It's a pretty weird place. It's right in the city center, but it's eerily quiet.
There's a church there (presumably St. Paul's) and it has a graveyard.
The gravestones are very old, and have turned black I guess from the exhaust fumes from the cars in the city.
Even in the summer it never seems to get very bright there - it has a strange atmosphere.
It's kind of leafy and tranquil, yet spooky at the same time.

I don't actively dumpster dive, but I have grabbed things at the side of the road on garbage night a couple of times :)

It turns out that in the UK it is indeed illegal to take other people's garbage:

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-13037808

I guess I am a criminal after all :D
 
The 8201A is special to me too. I lived on Penang Island in Malaysia for about a month and it was my one and only computer while I was there. I wrote a lot of stuff on it and the batteries died by the time I got back to the States. :(
 
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