Hello, today I received in the mail a book I ordered apparently by one of the engineers at
Sega responsible for their line of consoles. It's all in Japanese but based on the
little I know plus tables in the text, it appears to be fairly technical and thorough.
I'm excited to start translating it and see what lies within.
In any case, it got me thinking about what company this book might have as far as Japanese
literature concerning computing history there, or even just significant literature in
general regarding Japanese computer history. While we are more familiar with IBM, DEC,
workstations, minis, etc. the Japanese market had their own spate of different systems
such as NEC's various "PCs" (not PC-compats, PC-68, PC-88, PC-98), Sharp
X68000, MSX(2), etc. and then of course Nintendo, Sega, NEC, Hudson, and the arcade board
manufacturers. My general experience is that Japanese companies are significantly more
tight-lipped about everything than those in the U.S. and other English-speaking countries,
going so far as to require employees to use pseudonyms in any sort of credits to prevent
potential poaching. As such, first-party documentation for much of this stuff is
incredibly difficult to come by, and secondary materials and memoirs and such, in my
experience at least, are virtually non-existent. However, that is also from my
perspective here across the seas trying to research an obscure, technical subject in my
non-native tongue. Anyone here have a particular eye for Japanese computing? If so,
I'd certainly be interested in some discussion, doesn't need to be on list
either.
- Matt G.
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