AX architecture

AX (Architecture eXtended) was a Japanese computing initiative starting in around 1986 to allow PCs to handle double-byte Japanese text via special hardware chips, whilst allowing compatibility with software written for foreign IBM PCs. It was developed by a consortium including ASCII Corporation, Sony, Hitachi, Sharp, Oki, Casio, Canon, Kyocera, Sanyo, Mitsubishi Electric, etc with cooperation of Micorsoft. but notably excluding Toshiba and Fujitsu (who were hence the 'opposition'). At that time, NEC PC-9801 was dominant PC in Japanese PC market because PC/AT could not handle Japanese language. However, NEC was not tolerant for PC-9801 compatible machine and fighting court battle with EPSON which was only PC-9801 compatible machine vendor. Therefore opposition vendors desperately needed standard specification of Japanese capable PC.

To display Kanji characters with sufficient clarity, AX machines had JEGA screens with a resolution of 640x480 rather than the 640x350 EGA standard prevalent elsewhere at the time. Users could typically switch between Japanese and English mode by typing 'jp' or 'us', which would also invoke an IME enabling the input of Japanese characters.

However, soon after the release of AX, VGA was introduced by IBM for which AX was obviously not compatible. AX consortium had to design compatible AX-VGA.

As a result, average price tag of AX computers was much higher than NEC PC-9801 ones, and NEC PC-9801 remained the most popular in Japan. AX later came to be superseded by IBM's DOS/V, which accomplished the same goals purely in software thanks to advances in typical PC capabilities such as memory, speed, etc.

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