Before VAIO: The Forgotten Machines

The Line That Built Sony’s First Real PC

By the end of the 1980s, Sony had been in the computer game for nearly a decade. It introduced the 3.5-inch floppy disk with the Series 35 word processor, launched the SMC-70 for business, joined the MSX movement, built UNIX workstations, and experimented with hobbyist machines under the Hit Bit name. But for all the innovation, there was still no clear breakthrough. Sony had tried almost every angle, but nothing had positioned the company as a serious force in personal computing.

And then Japan hit a new wall. Western PCs couldn’t handle Japanese. They couldn’t display kanji properly, couldn’t format vertical text, couldn’t meet the basic needs of Japanese businesses. The industry needed a new direction.

The solution became AX, a standardized platform designed to make IBM-compatible PCs fully functional in Japanese. The idea was first conceived by Kazuhiko Nishi before stepping down as vice president of Microsoft. After his departure, Microsoft Japan took over the project and teamed up with the country’s top hardware makers to bring it to life. AX was a coordinated push to ensure Japan could fully participate in the future of personal computing.

Kazuhiko Nishi, former Microsoft Japan executive and co-creator of MSX, whose early vision helped inspire the AX standard.

Sony’s response to the AX standard was a new line of business PCs called Quarter/L. It launched in 1988, designed from the ground up to meet Japan’s language needs while staying fully compatible with the growing IBM PC ecosystem.

What set Quarter/L apart wasn’t just specs or standards. Sony trusted these machines enough to use them in-house. Walk through Sony’s offices in the late 1980s or early 1990s, and Quarter/L systems were everywhere. Engineers, support staff, and managers all used them. They sat on desks across departments, plugged into internal networks, handling everything from time tracking and expenses to document management.

In technical divisions and research labs, they often sat beside NEWS workstations. NEWS handled the heavy UNIX workloads and server duties, while Quarter/L served as the daily driver for office tasks and internal communication. That everyday reliability helped Quarter/L become more than a one-off product. It kept evolving.

The first model in the Quarter/L line was the PCX 300, released in 1988. At first glance, it looked like any other business desktop of its time. But inside, it was something else entirely. An IBM-compatible, AX-compliant, and built from the ground up with networking and expansion in mind.

One configuration quietly included a feature that would rewrite a small piece of computing history. Sony offered a version of the PCX 300 with a CD-ROM drive built in, making it one of the first IBM-compatible PCs to offer the feature as standard, a full year before the machines often credited with that title. Most of the industry still considered optical media experimental. Sony was already integrating it.

Years before the PCX 300 shipped, Sony was already working to make CD-ROMs usable on computers. In 1986, the company joined forces with Microsoft, Apple, and others to create the High Sierra Format, a proposed file system for organizing data on optical discs. It defined how files should be arranged, how directories were structured, and how discs could be read reliably across different machines. The standard was later refined into ISO 9660, which became the global blueprint for CD-ROM compatibility.

But a readable file system wasn’t enough. MS-DOS still couldn’t recognize CDs. So Sony worked with Microsoft Japan to develop MSCDEX, short for Microsoft CD-ROM Extensions. Released shortly after, MSCDEX gave DOS the ability to treat a CD like any other drive. It assigned a letter, mounted the disc, and let users load programs or browse folders directly from the media.

ISO 9660 and MSCDEX didn’t just make CD-ROMs work. They made them practical. By the time the PCX 300 arrived in 1988, Sony had already solved the hardest part.

In 1988, most software still came on floppies. Hard drives were small and expensive. The idea of a 650 megabyte disc was almost unthinkable. But the PCX 300 embraced it. It didn’t wait for the industry to catch up.

Sony kept moving. In 1990, it released the PCX 310NR, a portable version of the Quarter/L. It ran on a 386SX processor and featured a distinctive built-in ball mouse just below the keyboard. A matching docking station turned it into a full desktop setup when needed. It remained fully AX-compliant, relying on a JEGA graphics subsystem for Japanese-language support.

JEGA, short for Japanese Enhanced Graphics Adapter, was a modified display standard developed to handle high-resolution kanji characters that standard VGA couldn’t render properly. It was bulky, power-hungry, and hardware-specific, but it was the only way to support complex Japanese text on an IBM-compatible machine.

A year later, Sony followed up with the PCX 340, a cost-effective desktop built around a 386SX running at 20 megahertz. Compared to the 700, it was modest. But it was never meant to be a powerhouse.

The 340 was designed to scale. Affordable, reliable, and easy to deploy across entire departments. Inside Sony, it became one of the most common Quarter/L models, used for word processing, internal apps, and daily communication. Most were configured as NetWare clients, connecting to shared drives, printers, and email through Sony’s growing internal networks. In smaller offices, some even served as lightweight file and print servers. The 340 never made headlines, but it did the job.

That same year, Sony introduced the PCX 700, the first Quarter/L system built for serious server workloads. Powered by an Intel 486 processor and paired with a custom Sony memory controller, it was optimized for Novell NetWare and marked Sony’s push into enterprise-grade computing. The 700 was a signal that Sony intended Quarter/L to be more than a series of office desktops. It was building a complete platform: clients, servers, and everything in between. Designed to support modern business environments from the ground up.

An original Sony ad for the PCX-700DX

In 1993, Sony introduced two new Quarter/L machines aimed at different ends of the business spectrum.

The PCX 720A was a high-performance hybrid, powered by a 486DX2 processor with XGA graphics and full NetWare certification. It could function as a workstation or a server, designed for companies that needed one machine to do everything.

The 720S took a simpler approach. With a slower 486SX processor, it was built for file and print sharing in smaller offices, offering a practical way to get onto a network without stretching the budget. Together, these two machines helped ease the transition from Japan’s AX legacy into the new era of DOS/V, where language support was finally handled in software.

By the mid-1990s, the Quarter/L line was entering its final stage. Manufacturing had shifted to Acer, and the model numbers began to change. In 1996, Sony introduced the QL 30 Mark IV, a Pentium-based desktop that shipped with either Windows 95 or Windows 3.1, depending on the configuration. It was a general-purpose business machine, reliable and unremarkable, designed to quietly get things done. Yet it still carried the DNA of the Quarter/L line.

Two late-era Quarter/L systems: the VS-70 server and the QL-30 client.

The real final chapter came with the QL-70PRO, a tower system built around the Pentium Pro. It could be configured with dual processors, SCSI RAID arrays, and ECC memory, making it the most powerful Quarter/L system ever released.

More importantly, it was the backbone of Sony’s early Video On Demand infrastructure. These machines streamed MPEG-1 video over Ethernet to as many as thirty client PCs, each equipped with a decoder card to ensure smooth playback. Sony even developed a custom encoder, the QX-3500, to prepare the content. The encoder alone cost nearly eight million yen, or about $72,000 at the time. Full server configurations reached into the tens of millions. Companies like Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) used them for corporate video libraries and interactive kiosks. In a world before broadband, this was cutting-edge.

Sony’s QX-3500 MPEG-1 encoder system, powered by a Quarter/L PC for early Video-On-Demand applications.

And then it was over. That same year, Sony introduced VAIO, not by coincidence but because the industry had shifted. AX was gone, Windows had taken over, and multimedia was no longer a novelty. It was the baseline. VAIO arrived with a bold look, a global focus, and a clear sense of direction. But it didn’t come out of nowhere. The engineers behind it had spent years refining Quarter/L, and the ideas, instincts, and infrastructure were already in place. Quarter/L never made headlines, but it shaped what came next. And when the world was finally ready, VAIO took the stage.

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