Month: March 2025

“Common Source Code Project” Japanese old computer emulator notes

  • All emulators included in the Common Source Code Project that I’ve tested work in Wine (so far: tk85.exe, pc8001.exe, smc777.exe)
  • ROMs are not included, but you can get many ROMs from various ROM sites

PC-8001

  • Search for e.g., ‘pc-8001 mame rom’. At the time of this writing the first result is a page from wowroms.com with the required files
  • In the binary/ directory, there is a file called pc8801.txt with a list of file names of ROM files that the software will look for. The wowroms.com zip file contains the following files (random-looking number in front of the file name is the MD5 sum):
    cbf25d28f7f23ea3313c82587f873cd1 ap2k.ic3c
    cd428f9ee8ff9f84c60beb7a8a0ef628 font.rom
    2e47e5a78ad3c84ee4e782a1e2d887f9 it.em.ou.bin
    37f6793f7f3e3af0b506a33283a89d92 lx800.ic3c
    56e4e812c7a3240af96a474240610378 lx810l.ic3c
    f374db2869f7f44356ede51e94b4c5b6 n80v101.rom
    f1f6109541a89b626d4faf3f92ce5d75 n80v102.rom
    36a73378118eb9a610d50a8b5098c404 n80v110.rom
    324fb3d389cc0af5cc7df4a6f5c935d0 p72.2c
    26f9ac2a43dc28df74fea101c5ee1979 pl80.pt6
    ead508099bf31291543f22291703bba5 tiny.bin
    f9e396bd8385cc70a95b70510b80f7d0 w8_pe9.9b
  • We want “N80.ROM         for N-BASIC mode“, this is n80v101.rom in the zip file
  • cp n80v101.rom binary/binay_win10/N80.ROM
  • You can now boot (by doing wine pc8001.exe), but the characters are all white blocks.
  • font.rom contains bitmaps for our characters, but just renaming font.rom to KANJI1.ROM doesn’t help. Instead, do cat font.rom font.rom font.rom > binary/binay_win10/KANJI1.ROM
  • You should now be able to boot

PC-8801

Again, look for the ROM (search for ‘pc-8801 rom’). For the fonts, follow the steps above. (The font.rom is the same as above. If you already did the “cat font.rom font.rom font.rom > KANJI1.ROM command” you don’t have to do it again. If you haven’t, see above notes for the PC-8001.

My archive contained the following files:

793f86784e5608352a5d7f03f03e0858  disk.rom
cd428f9ee8ff9f84c60beb7a8a0ef628  font.rom
d81c6d5d7ad1a4bbbd6ae22a01257603  kanji1.rom
5d6854624dd01cd791f58727fc43a525  n80.rom
e28fe3f520bea594350ea8fb00395370  n88_0.rom
22be239bc0c4298bc0561252eed98633  n88.rom
8740932cda05e518a9955f1d08d6786f  ym2608_adpcm_rom.bin

Rename n88.rom to N88.ROM and (I think) n88_0.rom to N88_0.ROM, and you should be able to boot!

PC-6001

Again, I searched for ‘pc-6001 rom’ and found a zip file with the following contents:

2a13a60acf99a659144655b6c9e39b92  basicrom.60
9153f89e83f94f5d1cfe0a4e75d03372  cgrom60.60

However, you need one more file, SUBCPU.60. I couldn’t find the original ROM, and was satisfied using the compatible implementation available at this link: http://000.la.coocan.jp/p6/basic.html But I’m sure the original is floating around somewhere. (It seemed to me like it wouldn’t matter too much what code the 8049 microcontroller is running.)

SMC-777

binary/smc777.txt indicates that the following files are needed:

    SMCROM.DAT      Shadow ROM
    KANJIROM.DAT    Kanji ROM

However, only SMCROM.DAT is necessary. You should be able to find it by searching for ‘smc-777 rom’. The MD5 sum of the file is f6a34be914cd1b22e196c15e69cdd3ac. In my case it was called “smcrom.dat”, but you have to name it SMCROM.DAT and put it into the binay_win10/ directory. (Unless your OS can’t tell lower case from upper case, that is.) If you get a blinking cursor, you’re good. You can now insert floppy disks and the system will automatically boot from them.