Cinnamon patrol

I found out from my Dad that my first computer was a Sanyo and, after a little digging, it hard to be the MBC-55x. I was surprised by how much info there was about the MBC-55x online. Like, this guy is trying to sell you one for $995 ($US I presume) and reckons it's the perfect PC for "hacking", by which he means "[a] person who wants to learn the 'innards' of a computer rather than the person who wants to break into other people's computers as the term has now been reduced to".

And here is an article from Creative Computing Vol. 10 No. 9 September 1984, page 12. This article makes interesting reading as you can see what was on the mind of the savvy computer consumer, circa 1984. Presciently, the author concludes the article by saying:

"In any event, if you are considering a computer purchase now, you owe it to yourself to consider the MBC-550 to see if it can do the things that you want to do now, and to see how much of a gamble is involved with respect to your goals for future expansion. You may want to take the gamble. If you are currently considering a system with a disk drive, it won't cost much more to go with the MBC-550 than with a Commodore 64, and the 550 is a much more powerful and versatile machine."

I discovered, or rediscovered, or finally understood, the compatibility issues that plagued this PC: largely it came down to (a) it had its own BIOS which wasn't identical to IBMs and (b) it had its own graphics card which didn't have the standard "text mode" of the day - many software programs wrote directly to the graphics card and so you just wouldn't see the output. Really it wasn't designed to be compatible but rather an alternative and, in its day, it was a very well priced alternative at that.

I also discovered a number of "celebrities" who'd owned the Sanyo MBC-55x: Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin, Robert Ritchie - better known as Kid Rock and Hero's star Hayden Panettiere among others.

Labels: david