This section is for all things tech! I've decided to skip the "main" pages this time as I feel that would take too much work, so overviews of the systems available on this website will instead be on this main page here.
NEC is a Japanese company that released both consoles and home computers in the 1980's. The NEC section of this website goes over their computers, more notably the PC-8801 and PC-9801 families.
However, NEC was responsible for two other computer families: The PC-8001 and PC-6001. This page will briefly touch on these two systems to explain the evolution of NEC systems' hardware.
The PC-8001 was NEC's first home computer*, released in 1979. Due to its relatively cheap pricing in comparison to companies like Commodore, it became incredibly popular in Japan. Earlier machines could only produce ASCII graphics, but even this primitive model received many games in its software library. Later PC-8001 models would receive graphical modes and be able to support games like Pac-Man on the mkII and Balloon Fight on the mkII SR. Notably, all PC-8001 models had just a beeper for sound.
*Kit models existed previously, but this one was bought pre-assembled.
The PC-8801 and PC-6001 were computer families both released in 1981. The PC-6001 was both cheaper and catered more to hobbyists, so I'll cover this one first.
The PC-6001 was similar in hardware to its predecessor, but sported actual graphical modes and an AY soundchip to boot. It had four graphic modes but all were low resolution (highest res was 256x192,) and required the user to divvy up memory in "pages." Games for the PC-6001 would tell the user what mode and how many pages were necessary to play it. The later mkII and mkII SR brought more capabilities to the system such as voice synthesis, which required another purchase on the original system.
An American version of this system, the NEC TREK, was also produced. I unfortunately know very little about it.
The PC-8801 became a major competitor with the Sharp X1 and FM-7 computers. The original PC-8801 was released before the PC-8001's more beefed up models, but any original PC-8001 model game was compatible through the PC-88's N-mode. Starting in 1985 with the PC-8801 mkII SR, the PC-88 series would sport FM synthesis and an improved graphics mode (V2, as opposed to the default V1 and N-modes.) Various models of this computer family would be released until 1989; many early PC-9801 games are ports of PC-88 titles.
The PC-9801 was released in 1982 and stood out from its predecessors as a 16-bit computer. The system saw many hardware revisions and an extremely large library of games, both by commercial companies and doujin groups once the system became more accessible to hobbyists. The system sported a beeper until 1986, when it finally gained FM support. It also surpassed the cap of 8MHz found on most higher-end PC-8801 machines, with the highest appearing to be 66MHz. This computer family is known in the West mostly for its large library of visual novels and eroge, as well as the early Touhou Project games.