David, you really shouldn’t be embarrassed about using Planet X3 to demo a computer. At least you can be sure the game’s author’s not going to copyright strike you for it.
lol. You'd hope not. But I've seen some truly bizarre horror stories of youtubers being copyright striked for their own content because some large organisation used it (without permission - yeah. THEY use it without permission, and YOU get in trouble for it. Great huh. XD) I swear RU-vid is pretty far into corporate dystopia territory with it's whole copyright system...
@@KuraIthys People joke about [Music Company] breaking into your home and charging you money just because you yell the lyrics in shower. Well, it's not *that* far away, is it?
Thanks Matt for lending it out to David and all your effort! Got all of us a great video. Maybe call David quickly and ask him to retrobite the computer :)
That reminds be of growing up with the Nintendo GameCube. It had a handle on the rear, but I never used it. I always put it in a special bag that held the system, cords, some game discs, and the GBA as well. I also seem to remember the bag being an actual Nintendo product, but I'm not sure. If so, even they realized that if you're already taking everything else in a bag, why not just put the GameCube in there too.
"Program too big to fit in memory" appears on very old DOS versions because they treat EXE files as COM files and COM files have 64KB execution limit and I see this game has a 70+ KB EXE file.
@@grasstails9737 FreeDOS. I'm feeling a little frustrated, like with Linux in '99, but eventually retro-computing fans will say "Why wasn't I using FreeDOS?"
I had one of these back in the early 1990s! One of the things that will improve the compatibility quite a bit is replacing the buggy Sanyo BIOS with a generic Phoenix XT BIOS. My brother and I tried it, and it fixed a lot of problems with both DOS and CGA compatibility. The odd floppy drives were Chinon, and I seem to remember them working pretty well.
That was a long shot, you could brick the computer if something goes wrong. At least on those days, now you can copy the original rom with a EEPROM recorder.
@@buenasnoches2 the BIOS ROM on this machine is a removable DIP EPROM, so we physically swapped with a BIOS from a no-name XT board we had lying around. It's really hard to brick something this old.
"The term 'IBM Compatible ' means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. For example, [we] had visited Sanyo, the Japanese electronics manufacturer, early in 1983 and were shown a microcomputer that used the 8088 microprocessor, which is also used by the IBM PC. That was the only similarity between the IBM and Sanyo products. Not a single IBM program would have run on the Sanyo microcomputer without first making program changes. My Japanese hosts wanted to know what I thought of their soon-to-be-introduced product. 'To sell in America, it must be IBM compatible', I replied." - Adam Osborne, inventor of the Osborne 1
@@barthonhoff5547 The MBC-555 was marketed an MS-DOS compatible, which it is, not as an IBM PC compatible. The bios on an MBC-555 was loaded from floppy, so you couldn't boot from a disk for an IBM PC.
There were quite a few early '80s computers that were MS-DOS compatible but not IBM PC compatible, including not only Sanyos but also the Tandy 2000, DEC Rainbow, TI Professional, NEC APC, etc. The Sanyo MBC-550 series had graphics better than CGA, being able to display 640x200 graphics in 8 colors, but ran at only 3.58 MHz and was even less compatible with IBM PC software than this MBC-775. (There was an optional video card that gave it standard CGA graphics which did improve its compatibility somewhat.)
Dear 8-Bit Guy, thanks for your channel, I have been introduced to it by my 7-yrs. old son. He can spend hours mesmerised at what you do, and this brought me back memories of when I started to learn BASIC in a ZX spectrum, Apple IIc and much later bought a 386 with my first salary, and eternally exploring how to complicate things such as installing Windows 3.1 with DRDOS 6 as the base! My son says thanks to you and that he uses your videos to actually fix computers. Cheers from London and keep up the good 8-bit job!
@tone167 I have an advertising flyer for Sanyo Beta video recorders, I'll have to dig it out, it might have been a UK slogan. They used to do some really good kit in the 1980s, excellent build quality and easy to service.
Much like many Americans think there's one "British" accent, many Northerners seem to think there is one "Southern" accent. They think this even when they know there are many different "Northern" accents. Having lived and visited a few places in the South, I can definitely say that's not true. It's not even true within a state. A northern Alabama accent is as different from a southern Alabama accent as a Boston accent is from a Chicago one. Louisiana, Georgia, Texas, etc. (including various parts) all have very different accents. Just listen to (leave politics aside) Lindsey Graham (South Carolinas) talk, then listen to George Wallace (south Alabama). I wasn't able to find good examples for famous people from other areas (so many people move around - myself included!), but you get the picture. And even in a specific area, you get some people whose accent is thicker than others for whatever reason. My son has grown up in Minnesota, but he's picked up from me and probably sounds like the most "southern" person in his school.
the "motherboard" intel chip is dated 1983...the one below it is dated 30th week 1984..so it was definatly released after that (or atleast this one built)
WacKEDmaN But that only dates this specimen or it's latest repair. There could have been thousands of identical machines rolling off the assembly line in the previous years.
0mongo0 you mean the part that is irrelevant? Regardless of the architecture or OS, the series was launched in 1982, which is likely where the computer museum got their date.
I always got impressed by how many companies introduced (or, at least, tried to introduce) their own computer, back in the 1980s, always testing different specs, keyboard layouts, key features... I'd totally go nuts working with IT in that era :P
Nothing different with modern Smartphone companies introducing their models with different elements, applications, platforms or their own App market, and all those things.
It's weird seeing a restaurant I grew up going to in a small country city in a RU-vid video. Montana was one of the highlights of visits with my dad. Hope y'all enjoyed lunch there.
I bought two of these two months ago, and they both have problems: 1. The first one has problems with the motherboard (probably shorted capacitors), and the CRT control PCB is completely gone, because it has a large crack running through it. (Which I'm working on remaking) 2. The second one has a bad power supply. The glue used to secure the large components is NOT friendly to their leads! So I'm having to find replacements. Also, I am SO glad that I saw this, because I was worried about several things that I wanted to do to bolster the capabilities of this computer.
My Dad a very similar one but it was an IBM. He was an accountant so used it at work and then brought it home. It had a 20mb hdd which we eventually doubled to 40mb. The first game we got for it was frogger. I do remember having from about 1985-6 onwards. I mean it looked nearly identical to this. It felt like it weighed a tonne to a 10 year old.
In Rod Canion's memoir he actually mentions this incompatibility problem. He was convinced it would keep customers from buying these PC clones and made sure the Compaq Portable would run everything the PC did. I think the obscurity of devices like this Sanyo MBC-775 proved him right.
Absolutely. To anyone but a programmer, a computer is nothing without software. And them IBMs were everywhere in offices, having a cheaper or better-featured competitor that could still do everything your office machine did was a much easier sell. Who cares what software Sanyo has, does it run 1-2-3? WordPerfect?
@@watchm4ker Agreed, I can't recall how many clones I'd worked with back then that would come close to being 100% IBM-compatible but then have some weird quirk. I forget the model number, but there was a Tandy with an 80186 CPU that I almost bought on clearance before finding out its limitations on compatibility. That may have been the first PC I'd seen with 12 function keys instead of 10.
@@bobblum5973 The Tandy 2000. It was compatible to a degree, but it used an entirely different display driver. Not even text mode was truly compatible.
@@watchm4ker Okay, so I did remember the right model number! Thanks! Didn't it use non-standard cards as well? Not ISA bus card edge, I seem to recall connectors on both the card and main board, more like DIN 41612 Eurocard connectors (my experience with hardware back then is showing!).
Wow! I had never even heard of that computer! Great video. Also, show X3 on everything! Its a fantastic game and you should be proud to show it on every video!
My best friend went to college in Stephenville, I've been to Montana a few times and I've been up those same rural highways very many times. Neat to see them here.
Funny how back than portable tech was huge boxes with a handle but today if it does not fit in your pocket people does not consider it portable. When the OG Nintendo Switch came out I read comments like that, how it was to huge for a pocket so they dont consider it as a portable device
It was portable compared with what constituted a computer only twenty years earlier. Try fixing a handle to the whole building floor / room and lifting that! :-D
it was obviously called portable because it was 'movable' from place to place, unlike most computers of the time, not because it was easy to carry around like a modern laptop.
More like bolting a handle to a Coca-Cola vending machine. An ITX can be considered"portable " if for example a Gamecube can, which did have a handle - you might go visit someone or move it from work to home, but have the separate TV/monitor and maybe keyboard and mouse on both locations
@@aussieguy1012 not quite. A: is the boot floppy, B: is where all of your programs/the game you want to run is. you can't boot from B on these. This is why Hard disks in windows start at C:, as these machines came before a hard drive was necessary (nor did everyone always choose to use up 2mb of precious hard drive space for DOS).
Man, the nostalgia I feel when I’m watching all these videos. Most of these PC’s and technology was available to me only in 2nd hand or in elementary school. I used to take these things apart and put them back together again. It’d be awesome to hear the old whirr and buzz of an old hard drive or floppy drive.... oh man... the degaussing of the monitors tooo..... man I’m getting old!
The reason why the newer versions of DOS didn’t work on the machine had nothing to do with the proprietary version of DOS for the machine. The reason was the version you tried to boot from the XTIDE was of DOS 6.xx which requires a minimum of 512k of RAM. You only had 256k. if you don’t have enough memory it will say “Starting MS-DOS...” and then the whole computer locks up because it ran out of memory
I'd guess the poor compatibility has to do with its ROM BIOS implementation being insufficiently IBM compatible. It would explain why both "unbranded" MS-DOS and so many games fail to work, if they depend on BIOS functions that are poorly written or incomplete, while other games work perfectly if they rely very little/not at all on BIOS.
It also explains why Planet X3 would work perfectly, since I doubt that such a programmed-for-fun, specialist game would rely on much BIOS code at all.
Niels M H I seem to recall the following relevant factoids: 1. PC-DOS accesses some obscure machine details during startup, such as retuning the floppy controller to fit 360K on a 320K floppy. 2. DOS 2.11 had an unfortunate way to layer the DOS 1.x CP/M style and XENIX style file APIs. This may have wasted too much RAM before loading some applications, at least by default. 3. PC-DOS 2.x may not know how to get the hard drive size from the BIOS and will most certainly fail to recognize larger FAT16 disk layouts. Hard drive partition tables actually have dedicated partition type numbers for DOS 2.x compatible partitions.
The 80's was a fascinating time for computers. Some computers were specifically built for business usage because the business market was perceived as more lucrative.
Yeah, David's point at the end about Sanyo missing out on the gaming market seemed a little odd to me. Back in the 80's you'd have to be a trust fund kiddie to afford one of these. These were squarely aimed at high end business users.
Businesses were willing to pay out the money to gain a strategic advantage over other companies. That was the difference between now and today, where computers operate more as appliances.
Thank you very much for sharing this with us. I remember seeing one of these in a shop, in my neighborhood, back in the mid 80s. I wanted it so bad, but a friend had one, and warned me off it, due to the software limitations. Too bad the plastics of the day don't hold up as well, over time. Glad you mentioned the plastic restoration product.
Your game works because you are an incredible and very considerate programmer. ...And also it might help that you have access to a slew of different types of machines for testing. I imagine most off the shelf games back in the day never got near as much testing (on different machines) as Planet X3. Anyways, great video as usual!
I really don't understand why people expect instant results with the progression of technology like this. Release an electric car, and expect it to function like a gas car on day one is just unreasonable. You know what you're buying into when you buy an electric car, and you do so knowing the current limitations. There will be a day when charging stations outnumber gas pumps.
@@Damien.D when youve been driving for hours on end sont you want to get out, go to the bathroom, and get some food and drink anyways? In that time you'll have another few hours worth of power anyways
Me and my dad had the MBC-555 when I was a kid! A stationary machine that came with a green screen and a simple buzzer instead of a speaker. It was just as incompatible, but a good-looking design! I am sure it’s still in my parents’ attic.
panchamkauns Same. Originally we had MS-DOS 1.25 and the green screen. My dad acquired another with the colour monitor and MS-DOS 2.11. I was still using the green screen one for Wordstar in 1992. Worked well and so well built.
Ahem. (puts on best nerdy voice) I think you'll find that the keys have stayed white because they are not ABS. They are probably made of polybutylene terephthalate (PBT). 😁
Not really. The reason is the keycaps are considered too small to require flame retardant in the plastic. Flame retardants are generally required in plastic pieces over a certain weight, 2 g IIRC, regardless if they were ABS or PBT. The yellowing is predominantly due to the highly reactive bromine coming out of the brominated flame retardants. By the way, BFRs are toxic and bioaccumulative. I would wear gloves when retrobriting as long term exposure can't be good for you.
You know the videos aren't broadcast live, right? You can watch it at a time that's convenient and appropriate - you don't have to interrupt what you're doing.
OH MY GO YOU AREEEEEEEEEEEEEE, im in arlington! iv watchd like prolly half of all your videos on 8-bit keys so far. slowly coming to this realization was like an added layer of lore to this series.
Whow! This was my first PC and it is still in the basement. It has an 8bit ISA slot (yes...ONE free slot :-) ) and I changed the cards all the time...8bit VGA, EGA, Hercules, MFM HDD controller, joystick controller for two joysticks with Atari/Amiga/C64 style connectors. I still also have a NEC Multisync 3D Monitor that I used for Hercules, EGA and VGA. Oh, that was a great time! I think I´ll get it out of the basement and replace the capacitors inside the power supply
Great review! Reminded me of my first desktop computer I bought in 1987, Sanyo MBC550, I was very excited when I first bought it but my bubble soon burst when I tried running anything on it! Still it taught me a lot about pc’s and salesmen 😅
Great adventure to explore the early days of PC. I was happy to own a c64 in 1983 and 4 years later I got my first laptop ... and I should be now around 100 of them.
Ant that is my biggest beef with EVs... 150mi trip should not be something to consider, not alone worry. I did almost 400mi yesterday (and I am driving such amounts every other week), big part of it off highways... I really hope there will be 700mi batteries soon.
@@wv9mm I still find great deals through recyclers and thrift stores, but if you want something specific, then it's too expensive. I just picked up a working Compaq Portable 286 for $20 and EGA card for it for $35. Just gotta pound the ground. Although If I lived near Computer Reset, I'd have spent all my money there!
IMHO the fact that Planet X3 works on this computer is a testament to your programming skills! No platform-specific hacks, nothing fancy, just good old code that works and somehow runs FAST even on very old machines! :-)
Back in the 80's one of the first PC's I used was a Sanyo MBC 550/555, the training centre was annoyed that they weren't as compatble as expected. Great video which reminded me of my long forgotten past 'PC' history.
I’d be terrified at the thought of what would happen if it was accidentally dropped. 😬 Thank you for the videos! Very informative yet easy to understand 💗
I had one of those at university back in the 80s. Cost my mum about £700 at the time. Loved that luggable. Had a logitech mouse too which plugged into an expansion bus board.
