Epson Apex 100: A Budget Turbo XT PC from 1989

Greetings and welcome to an LGR computer thing! And this time we’ve got another system that’s practically brand new, despite being several decades old. This is the Apex 100 by Seiko Epson, a Turbo XT clone that sold for $899 upon its introduction in the summer of 1989.

At least, that was the price for this base model with dual 360K floppy disk drives. There was also an $1,199 version called the Apex 100/20, which came with a single floppy drive and a 20 megabyte hard disk. And of course, the monitor cost extra, with this 13” RGB color monitor priced at $299, or there was a 12” monochrome monitor available for half that.

And go figure, Epson constantly offered bundles featuring their printers, cuz it’s Epson and printing is kinda their thing. But yeah, this particular system is here courtesy of an LGR viewer named Nick, who generously donated this since it’d been sitting in storage for years, basically unused.

These Apex machines were Epson’s line of low-cost personal computers meant for distribution through mass retail channels, starting in 1987. Places like Montgomery Ward, Silo, Macy’s, Brendle’s, Kaufmann’s, Boscov’s. Really, anywhere that wanted to sell a cheap IBM PC-compatible, but didn’t have their own in-house brand.

What’s interesting to me is that the Apex series was intentionally made worse by Epson, in terms of build quality and specifications, so as not to compete with their existing Equity PCs. Those had been around since 1985, but Epson only sold Equitys through specialized computer dealers, you couldn't buy them in a department store.

Yet Epson still wanted a piece of that wider retail action, so they introduced the Apex series with specs that were always a step down from the Equity lineup. For instance, the base model Apex only had an 8MHz CPU and 512 kilobytes of RAM, while the base model Equity came with a 10MHz CPU and 640K RAM.

And whenever new Equity models came out, the old ones became the new Apex models. So really, this 1989 Apex 100 we have here is internally the same as the Equity 1+ from 1987. Heh, yeah this strategy of corporately-mandated suckage is fascinating. Where a company purposely designs one of its products to be worse in order to make their other products look better, then names it “Apex” contrary to its position at the bottom of the totem pole.

That’s not to say I think the Apex 100 is a piece of crap though, not at all! I actually really like this thing, both technically and visually. Sure, it was slow even by 1989’s standards, but nowadays that slowness provides some desirable characteristics in a retro PC-compatible.

Its 10 megahertz 8088-1 CPU was the de-facto choice on Turbo XT clones for a while, and naturally there’s a spot for adding an 8087 math coprocessor alongside it. Conventional memory is maxed out on-board at 640K, which is fortunate since actually reaching that particular part of the mainboard is an absolute pain.

It also has a battery for both real time clock and CMOS settings, one that isn’t soldered in so it can be replaced without much hassle. And like the IBM XT, it features five 8-bit expansion slots, with only one of them populated from the factory with the graphics card, more on that in a sec.

And overall I find the design of the case hugely appealing, with its dual cream-colored 5.25” disk drives, and this grilled section along the bottom that adds a bit of height to the overall system. This also hides a couple of amusing little doors on the lower-right.

The left one here is where you’ll find the turbo switch, swapping between 4.77 and 9.54 megahertz. And these DIP switches control the keyboard and monitor types, number of disk drives, as well as RAM and coprocessor settings. No need to open up the system and look for switches inside like most XT clones.

And to the right of that is where you plug in the keyboard, reminiscent of Radio Shack’s Tandy 1000 machines. But check out this little detail, this is so cool. The Apex 100 keyboard connector is designed in such a way that it only fits in one direction, guiding the cord through this opening on the right so you can close the door behind it.

Now that’s clean. Not only that, but the back of the connector has a flip-out handle, so you can easily remove the keyboard cable from its little cradle. Ahh, I love it! The thoughtful design continues on the keyboard itself, which is an 84-key board with a layout mimicking the IBM AT Model F instead of the XT Model F.

It doesn’t feature the capacitive buckling springs of its IBM counterparts, but it does use these white SMK inverse cross mount switches using metal leaf contacts, with a tactile bump that’s satisfying in its own right. I also quite like the way these angle adjustment legs work, where you press down on the back half and pull upwards on the front, loudly clicking them into place.

Another useful design element is found on the right hand side of the Apex 100 itself, with these two rubber pillars. These exist so that you can orient the case vertically, standing it up on its side with those rubber parts acting as feet, eliminating the need for a third party standing kit.

Around back is quite nice as well, with molded plastic around everything, reducing sharp edges, and even plastic brackets covering the unused expansion slots. As for ports there’s not a whole lot but it has what you need, like standard serial and parallel ports below the power supply here.

What is impressive though is the graphics card, featuring a 9-pin video port and a 15-pin gameport for joysticks, making for an unusual combo. Then there’s this toggle switch here, labeled color and mono. Epson called this their MGA card, or Multi-Graphics Adapter, being that it supports both RGB color and TTL monochrome monitors, outputting CGA and Hercules graphics respectively.

Speaking of which, the RGB monitor itself is pretty awesome in its own right, with a clean design matching the rest of the system and an etched screen surface designed to reduce glare. And around back you get some adjustment pots, as well as this switch for color and monochrome, similar to the graphics card.

Wait what? This is a color monitor, why’s it have a mono switch? Well, lemme power everything on and I’ll show you! Right, so! Being that there’s no hard drive you do have to insert an MS-DOS boot disk on startup, in this case an Epson OEM version of 3.20 that I’ve reproduced myself since the original disks are unfortunately long gone.

But anyway, about that monitor switch! Here’s what it does. Heh, yeah it straight up makes everything green, mimicking the look of monitors like the IBM 5151. Except that it’s still CGA running underneath! So you can run a game with 4-color graphics, like Planet X3 here, but it’ll look like it’s running in monochrome on a green phosphor display, kind of.

Really it just highlights the brightest colors like cyan and white. Yeah this feature is a definite first for me, though it was also featured on monitors from Magnavox and Commodore at one point. And while its eye strain reduction uses are limited, I still think the option is awesome without needing additional software or a real monochrome display.

The latter is still required though if you want to take advantage of true Hercules mode using the card’s toggle switch around back. However, something I didn’t know this thing could do until The 8-Bit Guy recommended I try it out is 16-color Plantronics mode.

Yeah, turns out the Epson MGA card features Plantronics Colorplus compatibility too, providing a 16-color option for the few programs and games that support it. Fantastic. On top of all this graphical goodness, the display itself is captivating to look at, with bright phosphors and notable scanlines.

It almost looks artificially sharpened, with 80 column text clearly legible, while still showing faint artifacting giving everything a glow that oozes retro appeal. I don’t have any dot pitch specs for this thing, but the look of it is close to the Tandy CM-11 in my opinion.

As far as how the machine itself runs though, well it’s a 10 megahertz Turbo XT setup, so it’s faster than a stock XT but doesn’t hold a candle to a 286. TopBench gives it a score of 7 at full speed and 4 when switched down for PC-XT compatibility, putting it in the same vicinity as systems multiple years older than when it came out in 1989.

Once again though, the Apex was intentionally designed by Epson to use older, lower-specced components. It was even lower-end than other discount brands like Packard Bell, which by then were selling 286 AT compatibles with EGA graphics and 60 meg hard disks.

But at least the Apex 100 has its 10 megahertz mode, which gives it a bit of a leg up with games like Lemmings that would otherwise be appallingly slow to play. And it has all the RAM you need on a system of this speed too, so playing games that require an active mouse driver or some other kind of TSR is doable.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, you can also run games like Atarisoft’s Defender that require a true 4.77 megahertz CPU. If you leave it at full speed you die in like half a second, so the ability to crank it down to XT speed is exactly what you need for games like this.

Oh and I also wanna mention the sound, or lack thereof. It does have a built-in PC speaker, a nicely-sized cone speaker at that, but for whatever reason it’s incredibly quiet. And in some games you can hardly hear anything at all it’s so quiet, like in the case of the RealSound effects in World Class Leaderboard.

And this is another speed-sensitive situation, where if you leave it on XT speed gameplay is downright painful, but setting it to full speed is... well, it’s still not quick to load in the artwork, but by comparison this is blazing fast. Much as I enjoy watching each tree being drawn, I’d rather not wait 30 something seconds every time the view changes so I’m glad the faster speed is here.

Prince of Persia works nicely too, as you’d expect I suppose. I’ve got no reason to try this except that I felt like it, and I’m still impressed by these animations in CGA all these years later. Can you believe this game is thirty years old now? Good grief.

And finally, I had to give a racing game a shot, and Accolade’s Test Drive is always a fine choice on a slightly faster 8088 like this. I also took it as an excuse to try out the joystick port, and yep. Works fine, plugging in right beneath the monitor! Ah the 80s! Joysticks plugging into the graphics card? Sure why not, we’ve only got so many expansion slots, better make the most of ‘em.

And that’s the Epson Apex 100! A neat little machine that, at its core, really is just another Turbo XT. They’re not the most collectible pieces of vintage computing hardware, especially compared to Epson’s earlier systems. And these days you can assemble your own Turbo XT using more modern components, like I did with my NuXT build.

But regardless, the Apex 100 appeals to me for its use of surprisingly thoughtful design elements while also being built on the cheap. The way the keyboard plugs in behind a tiny door amuses me, I enjoy those odd options on the graphics card and the monitor itself, and I love the clean look of this whole setup.

I don’t know what else to say, I just really dig the Apex despite its manufactured mediocrity! And I hope that you enjoyed seeing it in action here on LGR. If you liked what you saw here then do check out my NuXT build video for another side of the Turbo XT coin.