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New Sanyo MBC-550

O

Old Computers

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Aug 30, 2012
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Hey guys,

I just got a new Sanyo MBC-550 today. It works great, and is in almost perfect condition. It even came in its original box with styrofoam. The original owner kept it in great shape and kept pretty much all of the documentation that it could have. It even had a good number of Soft Sector magazines with it.

It has the RS-232 option installed, as well as a second floppy disk. It did not have the CGA compatability card that I was hoping for though. Most all of the disks work fine. One gets a read error when I try to read one of the files, and another has spots on the media's surface (won't try to read that one).
 
The CGA compatibilty card are extremely rare, virtually none were bought as they were so expensive like $200-300. And anyway, even if you got the PC compatible graphics, you would not be able to run many PC programs as the mbc-550 is clocked at 3.58 opposed to the 4.77 of the ibm 5150. You are lucky you got the disks, mine didn't come with any but it had the original box and original green monochrome monitor (Sanyo CRT-36)
 
I was extrememly worried that the disks would have gotten damaged in transit. Another nice thing is that it came with both DOS 1.21 and 2.21 (I might have those numbers wrong).
Mine didn't come with the original Sanyo monitor. It is a third party composite amber monitor. I might use another composite green monitor I have laying around. Green is much nicer to look at for longer periods of time.

Didn't mention this earlier, but I find the keyboard to be excellent. The only problem I have with it is that some of the keys are shaped differently and/or placed in different locations that what I am used to. The way they marked the F and J keys is quite unique. I think that it is more comfortable than the traditional way these keys are marked. The reset button on the keyboard is also a nice feature.
 
Old Computers said:
I was extrememly worried that the disks would have gotten damaged in transit. Another nice thing is that it came with both DOS 1.21 and 2.21 (I might have those numbers wrong).
Mine didn't come with the original Sanyo monitor. It is a third party composite amber monitor. I might use another composite green monitor I have laying around. Green is much nicer to look at for longer periods of time.

Didn't mention this earlier, but I find the keyboard to be excellent. The only problem I have with it is that some of the keys are shaped differently and/or placed in different locations that what I am used to. The way they marked the F and J keys is quite unique. I think that it is more comfortable than the traditional way these keys are marked. The reset button on the keyboard is also a nice feature.
Click to expand...

It would be DOS 1.25 and DOS 2.11. Yeah, the mono monitor is better than the colour 8 pin monitor IMHO. It has much higher quality text and still retains higher quality graphics. The monitor to look for is a Sanyo CRT-36. It looks like this.
$T2eC16FHJH8E9qSEUdQcBQRpZY61)Q~~60_3.JPG

That is a picture from the auction of the Sanyo MBC-550 that I own.
The keyboard is a Fujitsu Leaf Spring (i believe Gen. 2 maybe Gen 3) keyboard. I own two different types of Fujitsu leaf spring keyboards. The linear one (used on Sanyo MBC-550 keyboards) and the tactile/clicky one (used on HP 9000 series). I personally prefer the latter but the linear is miles ahead from a rubber dome keyboard.
 
That is a really nice setup. I'll be on the lookout for one of those monitors. It would be great to have the matching monitor.
Stand by for some pictures of my system. I might be able to get some posted later this week.

I agree that a clicky keyboard is the best, but I do like this one. Since I have been collecting vintage computers I really notice differences between keyboards. Most of the newer keyboards are not good at all.

Just thought of another question I forgot to ask the other day. I noticed that the motherboard has a slot for an 8087. Would it be worth it to find one and install it? The only reason why I have doubts about this is because the option installation guide in the back of the manual does not mention this at all.
 
I have the Sanyo with working CGA card. Quite cool

I have the Sanyo with working CGA card. Quite cool

I have the Sanyo with working CGA card. Quite cool. I was looking for it for about 20 years casually I just got one a few months ago. Have a colour monitor as well though it is taxan not the sanyo.

It can run several old dos cga games at proper speed. It has a hard time with sierra games though. Too much animation for the speed.



IMG_0321.jpg
 
That is a pretty cool setup.

It seems like the speed of the computer is one of the reasons why it wasn't fully PC compatible. Do any of you guys know of some software for the PC that can work with this machine?
 
without the cga video board you maybe limited to text based progams.

printshop will work, even prints but you see no graphics on screen just text.

several ibm basic programs work well.

text adventures work well such as zork.

apparently turbo pascal and microsoft quickbasic v1 which i have will run on a stock sanyo.

please check my site for a few compatible programs. they are disk images which can be written back to a 5.25 disk to run on the sanyo.

www.eriscreations.com/sanyo



Old Computers said:
That is a pretty cool setup.

It seems like the speed of the computer is one of the reasons why it wasn't fully PC compatible. Do any of you guys know of some software for the PC that can work with this machine?
Click to expand...
 
Is the MBC-55x a desirable collectable? If so, that's funny-folks here in the US picked them up because they were cheap and then got rid of them quickly because the PC-compatibility leaves--shall we say--something to be desired and it has the distinction of actually running slower than an IBM 5150.

Wow.
 
Chuck(G) said:
Is the MBC-55x a desirable collectable? If so, that's funny-folks here in the US picked them up because they were cheap and then got rid of them quickly because the PC-compatibility leaves--shall we say--something to be desired and it has the distinction of actually running slower than an IBM 5150.

Wow.
Click to expand...
One of the ironies of collectibles; the ones that were tossed out or not sold in the first place because they were crap are of course the rare ones today...

They did have a nice graphic colour display and you gotta love the VCR styling...
 
MikeS said:
One of the ironies of collectibles; the ones that were tossed out or not sold in the first place because they were crap are of course the rare ones today...
Click to expand...

No Mike--the really rare ones were always rare. How many VC Forum members own, for example, a Stearns PC? A darned sight few, I'll wager. One, maybe?
 
I looked at the website and I got the images. Thanks for making those available.

I am not sure if they (MBC-550) are really desirable, but they don't seem to get too much attention on ebay.

The styling of the unit is one of the reasons why I got it, as well as how it is unique among the PC clones.

Friday when I was running the computer for a while (if I had to guess I would say it was 30 minutes to an hour) the drive access times started to become extremely slow. Once a program was loaded it ran at normal speed. Pressing the reset button did not help. Turning it off for a while then turning the power back on helped a little bit, but it slowed back down after a few minutes. When I started the computer yesterday, the drives performed their actions right away (didn't have the time to test it for a long time).

The only cause I can think of right now is heat. The computer was pretty warm on the inside when I opened the case, but it didn't seem to be overly warm. Could poor grounding or noise on the power line cause symptoms like this?

Chuck(G), what is the Stearns PC? Sounds like an interesting computer.
 
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American-made PC compatible with 8MHz 8086 and one ISA slot and 4 proprietary 16-bit slots. Think of it as a made-in-Minnesota AT&T 6300. Stearns called it "Stearns Desktop Computer", but everyone else called it "Stearns PC" . No images on the web that I can find, but there's a review in the October, 1985 issue of Byte.

Very rare.
 
Chuck(G) said:
No Mike--the really rare ones were always rare. How many VC Forum members own, for example, a Stearns PC? A darned sight few, I'll wager. One, maybe?
Click to expand...
Well, I'd say it falls into the 'not many sold' category and the proprietary slots kinda put it into the same category as the Sanyo...

Speaking of collectible crap, I know a few people who wish they'd kept their Trabant...
 
Thanks for all the info guys. The Stearns PC sounds like a pretty cool system.

I will definitely be sure to check the C9 capacitor. The symptoms listed in that thread sound exactly like what I am experiencing. Do you guys think that if that is my problem I should try reversing the cap or should I just buy a new one? I am leaning toward buying a new one, but I would like to keep the system as original as possible.
 
MikeS said:
Speaking of collectible crap, I know a few people who wish they'd kept their Trabant...
Click to expand...

...or their Yugos. But maybe both self-destruct spontaneously with age.

Does anyone have an Eagle PC? Eagle looked to be a real winner in the personal computer business until the founder got "millionaire's disease" and wrapped his shiny new Ferrari around a tree. How about a Columbia PC?

It seems that older AVR Eagles and Z-80 Eagles are more common that either the Eagle PC or even the Eagle 1600. Same for Columbia--stuff like the 960s seem to be more common than the PC version.
 
Chuck(G) said:
Is the MBC-55x a desirable collectable?
Click to expand...

It's one of my favourite machines in my collection - perhaps as much so as any of my IBM computers - but not as much as my Camputers Lynx - and the reason is sentimentality. I had one from new, used it intensively over a period of time, and look back very fondly on those days.

I'm still really keen to get hold of DS-DOS for it if anyone here can help!!!
 
I don't have DS-DOS, but I have both DOS 1.25, and 2.11. If you need one of those I could eventually make some images (the computer I am going to use for imaging doesn't have a good way to transfer data yet).
 
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