The strange story of the Dreamwriter NTS devices: relatives to the NCXXX

[Baracus]

After a bit of flipping over back and forth to find info, I finally have a good grasp of the situation about the brand called NTS; and I wanted to share my findings for anyone in the future finding one of these devices

This is a company from Canada, that produced devices that were basically clones of 2 different devices: one was the NC100 and NC200 lines of devices from Amstrad, called NTS Dreamwriter 225 and 200. The 225 was a clone of the NC100 and the 200 was a clone of the NC200.
The main difference was that they were white and not black, and that the board was modified to support a different chip, which was not a ZX80, but a NEC CPU, which was equivalent to a 8080 type CPU I believe (more info here: https://hackaday.io/project/166333-dreamwriter-200-z80-laptop).
The ROMS for the NC computers won't work on the NTS variants as they were running different CPUs, and the UI was also different. the low tier machines would have the word processor and basic as main features, with usual calculator, address book and similar, while the larger models would have the floppy drive and have the spreadsheet too as extras.

One interesting thing is that NTS made also another variant of machines, that were like the NC100 but had nothing to do with it, called NTS Dreamwrite 325 and NTS 400. These were mainly word processors with basic and some extras, but shaped like the NC100; while the 400 model was with tilted screen and no PCMCIA slot (https://fadsihave.wordpress.com/2020/12/10/nts-dreamwriter-t400/). 
those were mostly used in school, as educational tools I guess, as computers were still very expensive in the mid 90s. I was able to find a NTS 325 and thanks to one of the good members here I was able to get also the ROM saved , so if you want I can upload them on the wiki.

I got the 1.2 UK ROM; which has working basic but no word typing app; the 1.03 US/CA ROM with no basic and the word typing app, and the 2.0 US ROM that has the basic and the password protection for files. To my knowledge these are all the 3 different ROMs existing for the NTS DreamWriter series of devices.

I also found the full manual for the 2.0 ROM, which can make available for the wiki.

I tried all the ROMs on my device and they are all fine, so hopefully this can help anyone that end up finding these weird machines   Technically you can reuse some parts to fix NC100 and NC200 computers, like the screen and keyboards probably, and some ICs I would assume, but I would consider these machines as relatives; kinda like the old school Tandy NTS 325 rebranded machines and the Japanese rebranded NAkajima ES210

[Gryzor]

Huh, never heard of those before, thanks for sharing! Very interesting indeed. It would be great if you could upload your materials! 

[robcfg]

I can shed some more light on the topic 

So, Amstrad wanted to create a portable word processor, and went to Japan with their ideas for it.

A company named Nakajima, showed them the ES-210 (which is basically the NC100) and they went with it customizing the colours, changing the processor for a Z80 and the rom software.

Nakajima sourced these machines to many companies, so there are a lot of different variants (or should I say, customizations).

The most strange part of the story is the DreamWriter 225, the 1st one sold under the NTS brand, which is a rebranded NC100 complete with the NC100 manual with a NTS logo on top of the cover, the Z80 and Amstrad's 1.06 version of the rom software.

After that, which may have been used for market testing, it seems NTS went straight to the source and Nakajima made their following units without Amstrad's intervention.

[Gryzor]

Cue AMS's screams being heard two roads down. 

[Baracus]

Glad to post what I have found
Big thanks to @robcfg, as he walked me through the exploration process with this device via PM! BTW I didn't realize that the ROMs for the Dreamwriter were actually in Mame They have been there for a while, but since the devices have so many different names, it was impossible to find the right ones until I started to dig in names and clones... And that's where the revelation finally happened

Rob mentioned Nakajima in one of our messages, so I looked for that ROM and found it in a MAME romset; burned it and found it that it was the same as the 325; which was different from the 225/NC100 and then it was just a matter to put pieces together and find the 2.0 ROM and the manual

Posting all I have on the wiki; at least we can have some of the info in one single place for some other soul that will wander around and will find these machines

[Baracus]

Another fascinating thing is that Amstrad collaborated with Nakajima; but I was not able to find any history about that company...

The most plausible thing is that Amstrad found the ES210 and asked Nakajima to rebrand it; or a collaboration came out of both companies, as Nakajima does not make electronics like that at all (they are known for electronic typewriters from what I can find, since the early 30s). 

Then at one point not sure if NTS got the deal with Amstrad and changed the design to use the NEC CPU, or if Nakajima did that for them, since they wanted to sell the devices for themselves too (even on the ES210 there is little to no info even on JP sites). But in the end seems that NTS was successful to push their machines in schools, while Amstrad focused more on other markets. As I can tell, most of the educational market in North America and Canada was basically handled by NTS machines in the mid 90s, with school districts buying these machines (325 and 400, not 225 and 200) for their classroom and students.

NTS closed down much later, when their low cost machines for educational market basically were not needed anymore, as computer became so cheap that anyone could get one. The last entry in the internet time machine for their website is mid 2000s if I recall correctly, and they were still making devices that were more like toys at that point, for kids to learn rudimentary computer concepts.

I would like to know more, but info are really scarce... Maybe someone from NTS or Nakajima is still around and we may end up getting the full story, before it is lost forever!

[Baracus]

OK, uploaded the ROM files I have, a couple of pictures and the link to the manual for the NTS 325

Hopefully this will be helpful for others that are interested in this weird hybrid of a machine The manual has the whole Basic manual keyword description so it is the most useful thing you can get, if you want to write code for it. Too bad it is not as cool as the NC100 basic, as you cannot write assembly too in it.

[Gryzor]

Thanks man