1985 – 2004retired
Aldus PageMaker
“It taught the world that anyone could lay out a page — then let InDesign take the next shift.”
“Kyū-hachi: the machine that taught Japan to type in kanji, retired undefeated.”
The PC-9800 series, known lovingly as the PC-98 or simply Kyū-hachi, was NEC's lineup of Japanese 16-bit and 32-bit personal computers, built from 1982 on its own in-house architecture — proudly incompatible with IBM clones. It began as a business machine with backward compatibility for the popular PC-8800, but by the 1990s it had spread into education, hobbies, and everywhere else Japanese keyboards needed to go. Wi
NEC kept the platform alive until 2003, by which point more than 18 million units had been sold and its dominance had long since established the company as Japan's PC king. The West barely got to know it — NEC kept Kyū-hachi home, sending only the similar APC series abroad. It didn't die so much as step aside, having done exactly what it set out to do.
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