I bought this system with a library of boring utilities on Mercari back in December of last year. It was pretty pricey so I was watching it drop in price... very... slowly. As were many other people. Finally another PHC-25 appears on Yahoo Auctions so I monitored that auction, and toward the end it had risen to nearly the same price as the one on Mercari, but without the tapes, so I decided to buy it from Mercari.

It is a cute little system! I think my Commodore 116 is just about the same size, but while the Commodore 116 uses a wallwart power supply, this one has an internal power supply and just plugs in using a standard two-prong plug. My most compact and portable system for sure.

Fortune smiled upon me as at least my dumb investment turned on and displayed a screen. The keys all responded smoothly and accurately. And the sound was crystal cl... wait, no. This system doesn’t produce sound! It was sold as an add-on. I guess that was a trade-off for the compact form factor? Well, at least the screen is beauti... wait, no. This machine uses an MC6847-compatible, much like the PC-6001. So the screen is... well, it’s green on green. I’ve been clued in that this decision is because it prevents color bleeding on cheap TVs, so I guess that was the target audience?

The utilities are varied but probably equivalent to a high school programming class take-home assignment. The most interesting was the typing tutor program because it actually uses the word points to make you think you are enjoying yourself, and it all sort of devolves from there, home budget, stock management, and my personal favorite, meeting room scheduler. You can schedule the use of I believe it was up to nine meeting rooms so appointment conflicts could be avoided. Can you imagine loading this tape up, then loading up your save data, to check to see whether room 203 is available next Thursday at 10:30?

However, the physical software itself was pretty well presented. They look striking when they’re all lined up together. Very photogenic!