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2 more ComputerLand BC88s - when it rains it pours

J

JonnyGators

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Mar 9, 2020
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Location
Attleboro, MA
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 it was likely a no hard drive 8088, and I was right. And it's in great condition. It also came in it's original box - although it was taped up quite a bit and isn't in the greatest of shape, but still very cool to have that.

Unfortunately, the video card in it isn't working. Just makes the CGA monitor do a flickery white screen thing. But I have a spare EGA card kicking around that works in it, and it booted right up from a floppy boot disk.

What's also cool about this one - the speed led works on it. Which seems to suggest that the speed led not working on my other one, or ones I've seen videos of, isn't a missing driver or software issue. It lights right up green when turning it on, and when I use the cp84 command to put it in fast mode, it changes to amber. Now I'm going to have to dig a little deeper to see if I can figure out why that doesn't work on my other one.

The next one is arriving Friday, and that one has an internal hard drive. I'm hoping that still has an original installation on there - would be nice to get a copy of ComputerLand DOS 2.11. I'm still looking for the original binders and disks. I may have to do a live stream this weekend playing around with both machines.

Here are some pictures.

20230117_175039.jpg20230117_175316.jpg
 
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 these machines that gives me parts to troubleshoot with.

Anyways, the main reason I pulled the trigger on a 3rd one was for the internal hard drive that was present in the pictures. An aging Seagate MFM drive that makes some high pitched noises at times indicating it's not in the greatest of shape. I did manage to get the drive into one of the working BC-88 computers, and with a bit of playing around with different cables, and reseating it several times, I eventually got it to a state where it would work.

It kept booting to a blank screen - which seems to be a problem with it running the menu program it's set to run in the autoexec.bat file. But I did eventually get access to the drive by booting to a floppy, and was able to copy most of the contents over to a flash drive.

I thought I hit the jackpot when I saw the cp84.com command in the DOS directory. But upon further inspection, I found it contained MS DOS 3.30, just with that file copied into the directory. Another case of someone knowing that file would set the computer to run at high speed, and copying it over, when setting it up for business use. So.....Computerland DOS is still lost for now.

However - I found something interesting. Out of curiosity, I tried running the cp84 command from dosbox. When doing that, it said it is running at 8MHz. So, I tried seeing what would happen if I ran cp84 l in doxbox. And it came back with

"Now, CPU CARD DIP SW6 is ON.
So the CPU Speed cannot be changed.
Please turn it OFF before changing the Speed."

I suppose that is the hardware method to set the speed, if one doesn't have the CP84 command. I will have to look at the dip switches and give that a try.

Anyways, it's mostly a disappointment - just business software. A version of wordperfect, some accounting software, some database software, nothing exciting. Ah well - doesn't hurt to have more BC-88 parts in the collection.

Hopefully Computerland DOS for this machine will surface someday.
 
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.
 
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 even a VGA card set to 8 bit mode, but would just continue flashing a curser on CGA cards. The 2nd machine came with a Hercules card, I can find on it GB11.2 rev D. That card doesn't work at all in anything, so I'm not sure how that setting cooresponds to that card. Machine 3 came with a card that switches between color and monochrome, set for color. Perhaps dipswitch 3 has something to do with the type of monitor you're connecting to the card? Or perhaps somehow that machine came configured in a way that doesn't work? Not sure - all I know is putting the dipswitch in the down position has things working consistently for CGA cards on my CGA monitor. Still hoping a binder shows up that can enlighten us more of the details of this machine.

Is it time for another Werner Erhard joke from Chuck now?
 
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