What a beauty! I really wish I had two floppy drives, as most PC-98 games require two drives. While a Cx3 model with two floppy drives exists, it’s rare. I’m trying to tackle this problem with an LFA-19 interface board and an external floppy drive. I’ll write a blog post about it once I get it working!

^{Spoiler Alert: I never got the LFA-19 interface board to work.}

There it is, under the porcupine heatsink: the original Intel Pentium 100MHz processor. In this setup, I only have 15MB of RAM.

I’ll be replacing the original Intel with an FV80502200 i200, another Intel Pentium but running at 200MHz—a 100% increase, baby! I paid $15.49 for the processor. I could have gotten one for free from a friend, but I didn’t know until after the purchase. You can’t blame me—how was I supposed to know he had a 26-year-old processor lying around?

See the blue circular component in the upper right? I really should replace it, but I’ll save it for next time. It’s the coin battery that keeps the clock running. Losing track of time really messed up my Windows 95 Tamagotchi! I’m not sure if I’ll blog about replacing the coin battery since it’s a simple fix—but I might. We’ll see!

Here’s the reverse side of the motherboard. I need access to this side of the board—I’ll explain why next.

I need to add a jumper wire between the solder pads at 3J4 to set a clock multiplier of 3, which matches the clock speed of the FV80502200.

While reassembling everything, I added more RAM—64MB, to be exact. Now I have 79MB total! For those interested, I used 8×32 72-pin non-parity FPM 60ns 5V RAM, compatible with the Mac Quadra 650.

So, out of curiosity, I ordered a WinChip 2 processor, wondering if installing it would make a difference. The WinChip is popular with the FM Towns crowd. It supposedly has MMX and still works on PC98s, while Intel processors with MMX don’t play nice with PC98s

“Centaur Technology is an x86 CPU design company, founded in 1995, and is now a wholly owned subsidiary of VIA Technologies. In 2015, the documentary Rise of the Centaur covered the early history of the company. While funded by IDT, three different Centaur designs were shipped under the marketing name of WinChip.”
— Centaur Technology Wiki Page

^{Spoiler alert: The WinChip didn’t make much difference at all.}

Here’s one of my favorite games, Shinji and Good Friends: Second Hanafuda Impact. I love Koi-Koi. I’m playing as Asuka and absolutely wrecking Rei. Speaking of Asuka, check out my new mouse pad.

Here, Asuka is selling me some coffee. Gotta love it!

Why is the mouse pad so small? Anyway, until next time—later, nerds!