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  1. J

    2 more ComputerLand BC88s - when it rains it pours

    If one is having display issues, I've found dipswitch 3 on the PC card to have something to do with display settings. It was set in the up position on the one that came with a CGA card, and set in the down position on the other 2. I found that both of these machines would work with my EGA card...
  2. J

    2 more ComputerLand BC88s - when it rains it pours

    It turns out dip switch 6 only disables the ability to change the speed on the computer, it doesn't set it to high speed.
  3. J

    2 more ComputerLand BC88s - when it rains it pours

    The other BC-88 has arrived. It's having an issue where it displays a blinking cursor on the screen constantly, although it beeps and the floppy light comes on as if it is continuing to boot up, but just not displaying it on the screen. Not sure what is up with that, but now that I have 3 of...
  4. J

    2 more ComputerLand BC88s - when it rains it pours

    I have an ebay saved search for Computerland BC88 computers, and every now and then I get an alert. Well, this month I got 2 back to back hits. First one has arrived today. It's an 8088 model - the seller didn't know which it was, but seeing it has 2 floppy drives in the picture made me think...
  5. J

    Need help. The computerland BC88 is failing!!!

    Wow, this is great information, thanks. You seem to understand these cards and chips quite well. Perhaps you can assist in identifying requirements for some features that currently aren't working without the ComputerLand version of DOS. This computer has a battery, and should be able to hold...
  6. J

    Need help. The computerland BC88 is failing!!!

    On 2nd thought - doesn't take a whole lot of effort to get the card out and take some pics, and I certainly want to help expand knowledge of this unique machine, so of course I'll share pics when asked.
  7. J

    Need help. The computerland BC88 is failing!!!

    I will be sure to do that next time I have the thing opened (which I'm sure will be soon, I'm always tinkering, or putting in the XT-IDE card to transfer over more games to the HD). For now, the computer is "fixed", in that with a little more playing and testing, I can confirm the resets no...
  8. J

    Need help. The computerland BC88 is failing!!!

    I didn't find a chip of that number on the board. But I did a little basic investigating of my own, and seem to have fixed things in a way that disables the reset. Of course, the answer I find so infuriating on any forum of any inquiry of an electrical problem is, "it's probably a bad...
  9. J

    Need help. The computerland BC88 is failing!!!

    It did this for 2 power supplies, one of which is only a year old and barely used.
  10. J

    Need help. The computerland BC88 is failing!!!

    The ISA test card arrived. And is not as useless as I feared it might be for a computer of this age. I noticed upon putting the card in a slot, 7 leds lit up. And then when the problem presented, the 8th led lit up. The 8th led? Reset. Which brings us back to how the problem initially...
  11. J

    Need help. The computerland BC88 is failing!!!

    Ok, I've ordered a post card with voltage leds to at least get a good reading on that. Meanwhile - the keyboard issue was a red herring, there's a connector on the PC card that needs to be connected for the keyboard to work, and moving things around I didn't always get that reconnected. I've...
  12. J

    Need help. The computerland BC88 is failing!!!

    Yes, as you found, the machine is upgradable to a 286, which is why it has the 16 bit slots. Slots 1, 2, and 4 are 8 bit slots. It came to me with the RAM in slot 1, the CPU in slot 2, and the video card in slot 4. I would guess that's how it was initially. Yes, while I had the extra ram...
  13. J

    Need help. The computerland BC88 is failing!!!

    Ok, I'm not convinced the parity check error is significant. Could be - too many variables. I'm finding that in general, mixing up the cards and slots gives me weird behaviors. In that 2nd configuration where I got the parity check, I tried again and couldn't get it to boot again. Either...
  14. J

    Need help. The computerland BC88 is failing!!!

    Please check my work here - I'm assuming parity check errors would be tied to the RAM, but, on PCs of this vintage, is that particular error tied to RAM, or could it be finding an error somewhere else along the way as well?
  15. J

    Need help. The computerland BC88 is failing!!!

    I managed to produce a "parity check" error. I decided another thing I could focus on is the slots of the motherboard. The motherboard is really just a bunch of ISA slots (with some capacitors), the PC is on a card, the ram is on another card, everything is on cards. This motherboard has...
  16. J

    Need help. The computerland BC88 is failing!!!

    Unfortunately, I seem to be no closer to figuring out this mystery. At this point, if I let the computer sit for a number of hours/days, I can get 15-30 minutes of operation. After that, I can only get seconds of operation sometimes. I've removed all the extra RAM chips to bring it down to...
  17. J

    Need help. The computerland BC88 is failing!!!

    Could be a capacitor, but if the power supply went into protection mode perhaps the fans would still spin, but I would expect everything else to lose power, which would mean hard drive would stop spinning and video card would stop outputting and the monitor would go white instead of remain...
  18. J

    Need help. The computerland BC88 is failing!!!

    I've taken out the hard drive controller and joystick card, that brings it down to it's minimum - PC card, RAM/serial/parallel port card and floppy controller, and video card. Problem persists. Will not display anything if I remove the card with RAM, so I cannot strip it down any further. I...
  19. J

    Need help. The computerland BC88 is failing!!!

    Well, I've confirmed it most likely isn't the power supply. The problem went away for a while. Hard to measure how frequently it occurs or how frequently it doesn't. But, when the problem occurs, it consistently occurs frequently in a matter of minutes/seconds. And then the longer I let...
  20. J

    Need help. The computerland BC88 is failing!!!

    I've really been struggling to trace down this problem. It seems everytime I tinker with this machine, I can somewhat get it stable, and then it sits for a few months, and I bring it back out, and it goes unstable again. For a while now, I keep periodically running into this problem where the...
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