Hi Jeff, At some point in the past I ended up with an NEC PC-8201A that had that same Met Life dongle as well as a plug-in cartridge which actually had their insurance agent software on it. It takes over the machine entirely when you have that cartridge plugged in, you don't have any access to the NEC operating system itself.
I'd never taken apart that EPROM-looking dongle thing myself, so thanks for solving that mystery. At this point I'm left to assume that there's a value that is read from it in some way due to that diode, and that if the dongle is missing, the cartridge refuses to run. Probably a means of "security" although if someone had access to a Met Life insurance agent's NEC computer back in the day you would think they'd also unscrew the bottom panel and take the dongle if they were "in the know". Security by obfuscation? Anyway I still have the dongle and the cartridge somewhere... Gary Weber Web 8201 On Sun, Jan 22, 2023 at 1:09 PM <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi all, > > > > I forgot to post this here yesterday. I did a video covering a NEC > PC-8201A refurb I did after letting the machine sit partially disassembled > for two years. The most interesting thing though was an odd option ROM. I > won’t spoil the surprise but so far nobody has seen one like it. > > https://youtu.be/KFTDzwjdYMI > > Jeff Birt (Hey Birt!) >
