🇯🇵 National JR-200: Part 1 (First Look) [#TCE0695]

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:05][music] >> Good day. Good day, comrade subscribers.

[00:00:16]Hope you're all well. Um thought we'd have a look at today at this uh National JR-200 personal computer.

[00:00:22]Um National, as in National Panasonic, as in Panasonic, as in Matsushita.

[00:00:27]So, this one came out in 1982. Wasn't too successful, apparently.

[00:00:32]Um this is the Japanese one, the JR-200.

[00:00:35]Uh there was apparently a North American one, JR-200U.

[00:00:39]And um a Finnish one. Um Terve et olla um Suomalaisia.

[00:00:46]Uh 200U uh JR-200UP. P for PAL. Um and I guess also 220 V AC. Um this being Jap- Japanese, it's got 100 V AC in.

[00:00:57]Uh rubber chiclet-style keyboard. Kind of reminds me of the C64 3000 Tomy Tutor.

[00:01:06]Uh apparently, it can be um a bit not insensitive, a bit um reluctant. Oh, what's the word?

[00:01:15]Uh it can be a bit troublesome. Um intermittent. So, it might need some cleaning.

[00:01:21]Um so, uh as I said, this is the Japanese one. So, we've got kana here, so we can choose between romaji and like katakana. Obviously, that wouldn't be on the export models.

[00:01:33]Little bit little bit of grime on here.

[00:01:35]Um should be able to clean that clean that up a bit. Um give the keys a bit of a clean as well.

[00:01:42]Don't know. Bit of you know, when you got silver paint on plastic, it's going to wear. Don't know if I'll be able to do much about that.

[00:01:49]Um two joystick ports on the side.

[00:01:51]Apparently, these are MSX compatible, not Atari. Surprise, surprise.

[00:01:56]So, um I think I've got I've got something for that I might be able to use.

[00:02:01]On the back here, we've got some options. Sorry about the lights. Sorry about the lights.

[00:02:06]Um channel one, channel two. So, we've got RF video output. Um color or monochrome.

[00:02:12]So, this is for the composite, I assume.

[00:02:15]Uh it'll be NTSC for this model. So, either color or monochrome.

[00:02:20]Uh black and white. And 2400 baud, 600 baud. So, that'll be for the cassette uh interface.

[00:02:27]Um little bit of information here. So, uh is it pass? Pass? So, uh passel com- computer. Something like that. Anyway, passel com passel com computer, personal computer.

[00:02:40]Right. Uh just a power switch on the side. On the back, we've got quite a few ports. So, speaker. So, we've got speaker, 8 ohm RCA, uh and uh volume control there, I guess.

[00:02:54]Uh tape recorder, 8-pin DIN.

[00:02:58]And we've got these um IDC type, is that right? Printer and uh expansion bus there.

[00:03:06]With these ones that surprisingly have survived 40 years. They are a bit sharp.

[00:03:11]Not a fan, but anyway.

[00:03:13]RS-232 serial could go there.

[00:03:17]And um what else?

[00:03:20]Uh RF output, so I've already spoken about that. And uh RGB composite output as well.

[00:03:28]So, we've got um RGB and composite on the 8-pin DIN.

[00:03:32]It's pretty cool. I might probably just have a fiddle with the composite to start with. That's nice and simple, just two pins.

[00:03:39]Uh [sighs and gasps] yeah.

[00:03:43]We'll uh open it up. Have I spoken about the RAM? I can't remember if I spoke about the RAM.

[00:03:47]If I have, I will cut this out.

[00:03:50]If not, uh 32K Organized a bit strangely in my limited experience. It's uh 64K of uh 4-bit RAM.

[00:04:01]So, to get 8 bits, we've got to access it twice.

[00:04:05]The video RAM, 4K, I think. 4K, 2K, 4K video RAM is actually 8-bit.

[00:04:10]So, that's faster.

[00:04:12]Uh 16K of ROM.

[00:04:15]Uh apparently, there were two ROM versions or basic versions, uh 5.00 and 5.01.

[00:04:20]So, we'll see what we've got in this. Uh 32 by 24 text in eight colors with um pseudo graphics. You know, all those graphics characters. Doesn't not a true graphics, apparently.

[00:04:33]So, um should we open it up or should we try powering it on first? I could try I'll quickly whip up a uh cable and um see if we get any output. See if the keyboard's working. Yeah, let's do that before we power it on.

[00:04:49]Had a look at the apparent um DIN 8-pin out. And I'm going to just use one of my little DIN breakout boards just to simplify it.

[00:04:59]And I bought a whole bunch of these off AliExpress. So, this is just an 8-pin DIN cable.

[00:05:05]So, when I'm not really sure on what's what, I just um I can just hook this up straight like so.

[00:05:13]Now, for composite, apparently, we just need pin two, which is apparently um ground and pin three, which is the composite video output. So, just on here, just pin pin two and pin three to an RCA connector.

[00:05:32]So, again, on AliExpress, I just bought a whole bunch of RCA like 3-m cables that I can cut in half or rip up and so, just something simple like that.

[00:05:43]Hook it up like that and um we can see if composite's working.

[00:05:46]Very, very simple.

[00:05:48]So, it's actually I think pin one looks to be composite. Pin two is ground. Okay.

[00:05:57]So, power on.

[00:06:00]And yeah, doesn't seem to be working very well.

[00:06:07]We can switch that to uh monochrome.

[00:06:13]There's monochrome.

[00:06:16]Actually Yeah, it does actually look a bit sharper. Obviously would be Well, especially with composite video.

[00:06:21]Monochrome take out the um the chroma.

[00:06:24]Much sharper image, but um Oops.

[00:06:32]Recording stopped. Let's try that again.

[00:06:35]New new recording.

[00:06:39]Okay, and power on.

[00:06:44]So, just garbage again.

[00:06:46]Okay.

[00:06:48]So, we're going to have to do some troubleshooting.

[00:06:50]Let's open it up and have a look then.

[00:06:52]Okay, the screws are out.

[00:06:55]Looks like Okay.

[00:06:58]Something's still a bit stuck.

[00:07:14]Once to come apart, but something is holding it.

[00:07:21]Mhm.

[00:07:31]It's no screws left.

[00:07:36]All right, let me fiddle with this a bit.

[00:07:38]Got it.

[00:07:39]There was just a clip clip there.

[00:07:45]I guess there's a clip probably on the other side around here then as well.

[00:07:52]Yeah, there we go. Okay. Two clips.

[00:07:56]Okay, how's it connected?

[00:07:59]Ribbon cable. Oh, awesome. Permanently.

[00:08:02]Permanently wired in.

[00:08:04]Oh.

[00:08:05]Socketed. This must be an earlier one.

[00:08:09]Big Pretty simple, okay. Well, I guess so 21 volts, 12 volt amps. So that puts 21 volts. Okay, so we've got a little power supply here.

[00:08:18]So if I could find a 240 volt that outputs 12 21 volts-ish.

[00:08:24]We've got a rectifier there.

[00:08:27]So um I could just replace uh find a replacement transformer.

[00:08:32]It might be as simple as that.

[00:08:34]Otherwise, if this is just generating 5 volts here then um these books out of the way.

[00:08:42]That's just generating 5 volts output.

[00:08:47]Um although maybe for the RAM it's um Anyway, we'll have a look at that later.

[00:08:53]Power's not the problem at the moment.

[00:08:55]It's um it's going to be annoying with this keyboard in the way.

[00:09:00]Which um that there. So, keyboard here we've got Okay, so we do actually have an internal speaker.

[00:09:08]Uh some small screws there, so I could actually take the um the keyboard PCB off.

[00:09:15]Uh I don't know how long that's going to last.

[00:09:20]So at least I don't have this big top case floating around.

[00:09:24]Anyway, the keyboard PCB undone, so I can at least oops.

[00:09:31]Remember that screw, Brett. So, still got the speaker attached, unfortunately.

[00:09:36]Wow, look at that. That's pretty cool.

[00:09:39]I like those.

[00:09:42]It's really neat.

[00:09:43]So, if I wanted to, I could probably desolder the PCB just to make it a bit easier.

[00:09:48]Oh, actually, I might just desolder the the speaker.

[00:09:53]So, it's not flapping around everywhere.

[00:09:55]Um although, desoldering the whole PCB might be a bit easier.

[00:09:59]You know, I'll do that.

[00:10:01]Um just stick that there.

[00:10:05]So, here's the uh the rubber mat.

[00:10:08]Looks like there's a couple of different sections.

[00:10:11]So, take those off and give them a bit of a bit of a clean. Oof.

[00:10:17]Yeah, really need a clean, I think.

[00:10:22]Nice solid space bar.

[00:10:25]Right.

[00:10:27]Now, the main board.

[00:10:33]Oh, there's actually a fuse in there as well.

[00:10:36]So, we'll have a closer look. So, 64,000 nibbles, so 32K.

[00:10:42]Remember that screw there as well, Brett.

[00:10:47]Um this one here, so this is the um the CRT controller, I believe, for the NTSC model.

[00:10:54]Um we've got our two ROMs here. So, 16K, 8K, um two lots of 8K. From the serial number, I think this is the um So, we've got an A ROM and a B ROM. This is the version 5.00. So, this is the older one.

[00:11:08]Uh we've got our right in the middle of the board here, we've got our RCA video output, RCA um RF modulated video output that we really don't need.

[00:11:24]Here's the uh the CPU here, the 6802.

[00:11:28]Um compatible, whatever.

[00:11:32]Uh up here, I think this is the IO controller.

[00:11:35]MN1271.

[00:11:37]So, I'm just uh looking at this Finnish website. He's done an excellent job.

[00:11:42]Um, that's that there.

[00:11:46]What do we have down here?

[00:11:48]Um, two lots of 2K SRAM for the video RAM.

[00:11:52]So, and then what have we got here?

[00:11:55]MN1544CJR.

[00:11:59]4-bit micro processor used for joystick and keyboard. Contains 4K ROM including system character set. Okay, that's pretty cool.

[00:12:08]Uh, power supply up here. I'm not sure what that is. I don't know if that's a big 5-V regulator. Let me just check.

[00:12:13]Yeah, so this is actually apparently a switching 5-V switching regulator. Uh, a Sanken SI8 8053B.

[00:12:25]Input voltage between 15 and 55 V, 3 A.

[00:12:31]Output voltage is 5 V, 2 A condition. Yeah. So, okay. That's pretty cool. Condition 30 A.

[00:12:39]Okay, that's if there's 30 V, 2 A input.

[00:12:41]Okay. Cool.

[00:12:44]So, I could essentially, I guess, replace this whole AC thing with just a USB socket, perhaps. 5 V in from a 2 A maybe. If it's working, I'll have to have a look at that all that. So, that's essentially essentially it.

[00:13:01]Um, I'm going to fiddle around a bit more. I think I think I might I might remove that. No, I think I'll just get rid of the speaker first. Just took the speaker off. A little bit more manageable now. So, I'll just have a closer look, I think. So, what did we say that was? That was um 4-bit processor for the keyboard and um joystick. It's on ROM.

[00:13:29]Then we've got the two lots of 2K for the video RAM.

[00:13:34]We've got one of the 8K ROMs there, A and B. So, I think that's version 5.0 basic.

[00:13:41]Then some logic.

[00:13:45]1.57, that's multiplexer, isn't it?

[00:13:49]And then we've got the 4864s, so we've got yeah, 4-bit RAM.

[00:13:55]There.

[00:13:56]CRT controller there.

[00:13:59]There's our actual CPU, so 6802. I love how they've got the uh some of the the pins on there listed.

[00:14:07]And I think this is a peripheral controller for all sorts of things. So, you can see here we've got connector 10, so I think that might be for the serial port. So, I think the serial port, we've got the printer there. So, I think the RS-232, you just it's just a matter of connecting it up to that connector.

[00:14:22]So, might be an add serial if the machine's working.

[00:14:26]There's our expansion bus.

[00:14:28]And our video output and then that's our RCA. So, I keep saying RCA. RF video output.

[00:14:35]So, I'll probably just disconnect that completely. We don't need that at all.

[00:14:38]So, I'll just desolder the whole can.

[00:14:41]I'm never going to use that.

[00:14:44]Joystick connectors Oh.

[00:14:47]I don't know what that's for, that switch there.

[00:14:50]Interesting.

[00:14:53]So, there we go.

[00:14:54]Uh I'm going to give it all a bit of a clean now.

[00:14:57]Then we will I might look at figuring out the power supply, figuring out what I'm going to do there. I might just leave it on 100 volts for now.

[00:15:05]Oh, there's our our audio output there and our cassette.

[00:15:10]It's a nice little uh There's our 5-volt switching relay up switching regulator. There's our nice little relay for the cassette.

[00:15:20]So, yeah. I'll have a bit of a look at it and um we'll start troubleshooting in the next video once I've given it a bit of a clean.

[00:15:27]Okay, hopefully that was of some interest. Thanks for sticking around.

[00:15:30]Bye for now.

[00:15:40]>> [music] [music] [music]