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From: kevin@msa3b.UUCP (Kevin P. Kleinfelter)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.misc
Subject: Re: Antique Computer Question
Message-ID: <1534@msa3b.UUCP>
Date: 19 Feb 91 13:04:31 GMT
References: <91039.201149U40213@uicvm.uic.edu> <8330@plains.NoDak.edu>
Organization: Dun and Bradstreet Software, Inc., Atlanta, GA
Lines: 41

jnelson@plains.NoDak.edu (Jim Nelson) writes:

>In article <91039.201149U40213@uicvm.uic.edu> U40213@uicvm.uic.edu (Matthew Thomas Mead, Esq.) writes:
>>Hello,
>> An acquaintance of mine's father got a great deal on a Sanyo MBC 555
>>computer.  

>How much did they pay him to take it away?  :)


>            Has anyone heard of this computer.  If so what is the operating
>>system, and what are it's capabilities.

>Can you say "sort of MS-DOS, but not really"?  My uncle has a 550, by Sanyo.
>It seem that the poor machine is limited to 512k, and only has a couple bus
>slots.  It didn't seem to like hardrives allthat much, although the hard
>drive in my uncles machine was of questionable relyability.  The 555 is a
>tiny bit better.  But only a tiny bit.

>IMHO, it's a reasonable boat anchor, if you fill it with cement.  Sanyo
>should have stuck to making stereos.

Agreed. However, in a slightly more helpful vein:

It runs MSDOS, but it may have to be "Sanyo MSDOS."  In the olden days,
it would run Turbo-Pascal, as long as TP was configured for "MSDOS" and
not for "IBM/PC."  The major bugaboo I encountered with this machine
was that its screen I/O was BIOS compatible with the PC, but NOT
hardware compatible.  I wrote a pretty fair sized application on
it that did all its I/O via INT 10H, instead of direct screen writes.
It ran a little slow, but was entirely usable.  Try booting
generic MSDOS (not PCDOS).  If that fails, you'll have to locate a copy
of Sanyo MSDOS.  You may have to use an OLD copy of Turbo Pascal to program
it, because I think that all modern software products assume hardware 
compatibility.

-- 
Kevin Kleinfelter @ Dun and Bradstreet Software, Inc (404) 239-2347
{emory,gatech}!nanovx!msa3b!kevin

Look closely at the return address.  It is nanovx and NOT nanovAx.