3 ms·

Sanyo Triple Five

104 points by zdw 4y ago

neilv 4y ago
The Sanyo MBC-550/555 was the first computer I bought myself as a kid (with a lot of hustle, and the help of a kindly computer store owner who offered it for half price). Given that the last time I saw one it was in like-new condition, it's odd to see the one in the article looking closer to having come from the dirt in an archaeology dig. It was magazine cover news when it was introduced (this same magazine was how I learned of it), and you can see they were going for more of a sleek component stereo look than the IBM PCjr: https://www.ebay.com/itm/192887175577 https://www.ebay.com/itm/192887175577
- analog31 4y ago
  Likewise here. I learned to program in high school, finished freshman year of college, and got a summer internship at a computer facility. I gave myself a budget of $1000 for a complete computer with printer, that would let me do word processing and programming. The Sanyo won out. It got me through college. It ran MS-DOS but was not "PC compatible" meaning it wouldn't run PC software that was hard coded for the weird IBM PC memory map. But my dad got me a copy of Turbo Pascal for MS-DOS, for my birthday, and it ran on my Sanyo, so I was perfectly happy with my setup.
watersb 4y ago
“Even though I seem to have terrible luck with x86-based computers, that doesn’t mean I have to take it lying down. I can go out there and cause even worse things to happen to me.” :-)
rob74 4y ago
> The power plug is a little weird – it looks like an Egyptian “Type-C” plug, but it has these very thin-gauge brown and blue wires sticking out of it that were unceremoniously severed. Made in the DDR! I am not really confident that this is an Egyptian-market machine The power plug looks like someone (from Germany or Eastern Europe) bought a machine with a different type of plug and adapted it for use with "Schuko" sockets at some point using a plug he had lying around. That plug definitely looks much older than the rest of the machine - might even be bakelite? Then again, technological progress in the GDR was slow, so they might have still been producing plugs that looked like that in the 1980s...
- seszett 4y ago
  I don't think this would be compatible with Schuko sockets because the plug would need two notches to accommodate the Schuko ground pins and the lateral guides in the socket. It's just regular old type-C to me, I have some very similar plugs (in bakelite indeed) lying around from old French and Belgian appliances (ironically, dating from a time where power in France was 110V).
  - sandos 4y ago
    Schuko also has non-grounded variants: CEE 7/1 is one apparently.

104 points by zdw 4y ago

The Sanyo MBC-550/555 was the first computer I bought myself as a kid (with a lot of hustle, and the help of a kindly computer store owner who offered it for half price). Given that the last time I saw one it was in like-new condition, it's odd to see the one in the article looking closer to having come from the dirt in an archaeology dig. It was magazine cover news when it was introduced (this same magazine was how I learned of it), and you can see they were going for more of a sleek component stereo look than the IBM PCjr: https://www.ebay.com/itm/192887175577 https://www.ebay.com/itm/192887175577

analog31 4y ago
Likewise here. I learned to program in high school, finished freshman year of college, and got a summer internship at a computer facility. I gave myself a budget of $1000 for a complete computer with printer, that would let me do word processing and programming. The Sanyo won out. It got me through college. It ran MS-DOS but was not "PC compatible" meaning it wouldn't run PC software that was hard coded for the weird IBM PC memory map. But my dad got me a copy of Turbo Pascal for MS-DOS, for my birthday, and it ran on my Sanyo, so I was perfectly happy with my setup.

watersb 4y ago

“Even though I seem to have terrible luck with x86-based computers, that doesn’t mean I have to take it lying down. I can go out there and cause even worse things to happen to me.” :-)

rob74 4y ago

> The power plug is a little weird – it looks like an Egyptian “Type-C” plug, but it has these very thin-gauge brown and blue wires sticking out of it that were unceremoniously severed. Made in the DDR! I am not really confident that this is an Egyptian-market machine The power plug looks like someone (from Germany or Eastern Europe) bought a machine with a different type of plug and adapted it for use with "Schuko" sockets at some point using a plug he had lying around. That plug definitely looks much older than the rest of the machine - might even be bakelite? Then again, technological progress in the GDR was slow, so they might have still been producing plugs that looked like that in the 1980s...

seszett 4y ago
I don't think this would be compatible with Schuko sockets because the plug would need two notches to accommodate the Schuko ground pins and the lateral guides in the socket. It's just regular old type-C to me, I have some very similar plugs (in bakelite indeed) lying around from old French and Belgian appliances (ironically, dating from a time where power in France was 110V).
- sandos 4y ago
  Schuko also has non-grounded variants: CEE 7/1 is one apparently.