Kenn Garroch investigates the niceties of an almost IBM-compatible Sanyo's disk-based MBC550

The Sanyo MBC 550 has been brought out at a time when the magic words 'IBM compatibility' are all the rage. Since the machine runs MSDOS 1.25 it's a safe bet that there will be large amounts of business software available for it.

The system comes with a bundle of Micropro software that will make it very attractive to commercial users, considering its price (£699 ex VAT for the single drive version, £899 for dual drives), and as a commercial machine it appears to be a good proposition, even though it is not directly IBM compatible.

The system comes in a sturdy cardboard box and is well packed with the usual polystyrene foam that can be used over again for transportation. There was a little difficulty getting the system out of its box as this is a four-handed job - I am one of those unfortunates with only two so it was a bit of a struggle.

Once out of its box and packing the machine consists of two parts. The keyboard and what the user guide calls the 'mainframe'. This conjures up pictures of rooms full of flashing lights and whirring tapes. The reality is a little disappointing and looks a lot like a video cassette recorder.

The monitor, an RGB colour display (with colour correctly spelt on the facia), came in a larger box. This was a lot easier to extract but nevertheless well packed: this sits on top of the mainframe box producing a neat, if tall, workstation.

The review machine came with only one manual, the Sanyo Operator's Guide. This may have been a provisional issue since there are a few things missing. Sanyo will include an introduction and manuals for the Micropro software that comes with the machine.

There is a note in the back of the user guide to the effect that additional manuals are available from 'your Sanyo dealer'. The list of additional manuals includes such things as the Sanyo Basic and MSDOS manuals.

The user guide contains sections on setting up the machine, connections etc. These instructions are fairly good and most people will be able to get the system up and running without any difficulty. The only connections that need to be made are to plug the keyboard and the monitor into the main processor box. Then just put the system disk into the drive and switch on.

Also included in this volume are a glossary of terms, Sanyo Basic and MSDOS as well as a technical reference guide.

The MBC comes with the usual separate, plug-in, keyboard. This is set out as three sections, the function keys on the left, the main qwerty keyboard in the centre and a numerical and cursor keypad on the right.

There are five function keys which can be shifted to obtain ten functions. Basic allows 20 keys to be programmed and, though the manual doesn't say so, the keys 11 to 20 are accessed by pressing the control key and one of the number keys at the top of the keyboard. These keys 11 to 20 seem to be used only in Basic although there is probably no reason why they should not be used in other system programs.

Keys 1 to 10 are used in WordStar to access some of the more common commands. The keys can contain up to eight characters, enough for simple commands but not for complex Basic sequences.

The main keyboard is distinguished by its overlarge RETURN key and takes a little getting used to as the standard layout is spoiled by some terrible positioning of such keys as SHIFT and RETURN. There are two 'lock' keys, the graph and caps (called LOCK). When the latter is on (denoted by its bright red LED) pressing shift gives lower case. Both the caps and graph lock keys have these LEDs but the num lock seems to have been ignored when the manufacturer was handing them out.

The numeric keypad doubles as a cursor control point. From the business point of view, the pad has all the usual operator (=/*-+ and its own RETURN). Unfortunately these have been set out in an odd way, with the arithmetic operators at the top, instead of the bottom. The red BREAK key is situated at the top right hand corner of the pad. This is used to perform the same as CTRL+C and when used in Basic causes a deep burping sound to be emitted. This is the system's 'bell' sound and invites funny looks from other occupants of the room.

Overall, the keyboard is rather tattily constructed and the space bar has a tendency to squeak. This can be annoying, or keep you awake depending on your disposition (Sanyo told me that this shouldn't happen and is probably an oddity of the review machine). The bottom of the keyboard case appears to have been made out of tin plate, the top is plastic, imitation brushed aluminium. The review machine had a shocking tendency to pick up a static charge on the bottom of the keyboard, 'rather disconcerting', I thought after earthing it a few times.

It seems a shame that Sanyo couldn't provide a better keyboard.

The MBC550 is able to drive two monitors, an RGB and a monochrome. The manual states that the output for the latter is a connection for a 'high-resolution composite monitor' so either this puts out a composite video signal or is a bad Orienglish translation. The former seems more likely as different shades of green were apparent on the monochrome monitor used for the test.

The picture on the Sanyo RGB monitor, supplied for the test, was steady and the colours bright and clear.

The screen access speed appeared to be generally slow and at times very slow, especially with WordStar. The graphics available from Basic contradict the above statement since the fill command is slick and speedy. It looks as though the version of WordStar has been badly converted from the original, as is currently the norm for 16-bit machines.

The colours available are blue, green, light blue, red, purple, yellow and the two non-colours black and white. There are DIP switches within the main case that allow the colour output to be altered for monochrome monitors.

The whole system is disk-based and the test machine was a single-drive model. The disks used are single-sided double-density, and a single disk supplies 156K of storage of which 138K is available for use by user files. When using WordStar, this gives room for a document of about 2,500 to 3,000 words plus its backup. This is not a lot and it would be nice if there were more.

The test machine having only one drive, has its problems. It is possible to copy whole disks using the diskcopy utility. This asks you to exchange the disks thre times as it does the copy and takes about a minute to do a whole backup. This is pretty quick but when you're used to using two-drive systems, it is a bit tedious.

One very annoying thing about the single-drive version of the MBC550 was the total lack of a facility to copy a single file from one disk to another. Sanyo says it is looking into this and an additional copy utility should be available soon. Apart from this, the MSDOS disk operating system has most of the standard commands.

A final thought, while on the subject of disks, is the system clock. Don't take this as being accurate, especially if a great deal of disk accessing is going on. The clock is stopped every time the disks are accessed making it lose time.

Bundled software is becoming the 'in thing' and the Sanyo MBC550 is no exception. Included with the double-disk machine, besides MSDOS, are WordStar/Mailmerge, Calcstar, Datastar/Supersoft, Reportstar and Sanyo Basic. The single-drive system comes with only WordStar and Calcstar plus an introduction.

The above Micropro packages have been adapted from their originals to run on this machine. The WordStar, with which this was written, appeared to have been badly converted from the original 8-bit version. It is dreadfully slow at updating the screen, though the disk access seemed to be about normal speed. There is no WSCUSTOM file included, instead there is a Basic program that allows the screen colours to be altered. An addition to the normal WordStar is the user-definable keys. These allow common procedures to be carried out at the push of a button. The contents of the keys are displayed at the bottom of the screen to stop you guessing what they do.

The Basic supplied with the system seems to be a fairly standard Microsoft version, although it is called Sanyo Basic. All the usual functions and commands are here plus a few more such as PACK$ and UNPACK$ which convert ASCII strings into strings of ASCII code numbers. The graphics facilities are good with built-in commands for drawing squares, circles, lines, etc. There is also a nice fast PAINT command which makes one wonder why some of the other screen handling routines are so slow.

The documentation supplied with the Basic is rather poor and does not cover all of the reserved words or file handling.

The operating system is MSDOS and will probably be one of the main selling points of the machine. There are not many systems of this price that run MSDOS, giving easy access to large amounts of business software. The documentation for the operating system is again, incomplete; just enough to get you going.

A number of interfaces are available including one for a joystick. On the review machine, only the printer, a Centronics connector, the monitors and the keyboard interface were fitted. The RS232 link is extra though there are fitting instructions given in the manual. There is what the manual terms an external interface. This will be probably used for future expansion for such things as extra disk drives, extra memory and other peripherals.

It is possible to upgrade the memory internally, from the standard 128K, in steps of 64K, to 256K. Again, instructions are given in the manual for doing this. Upgrading the single-drive version of the machine appears to be fairly straightforward, needing only the new drive. All the connections appear to be internally available.

The MBC550 does not strike me as a games machine, but since it has the capacity to use Apple-type joysticks, the manufacturers must have this possibility in mind or they've got mouse fever). It is true that some games machines are equally as expensive and, I suppose, a business user probably enjoys a good alien zap as much as the rest of us (even though they are loath to admit that such things go on in the industrial empires of the nation).

Operating the MBC was a little odd at first as it took a while to get used to the keyboard (and its squeak). One thing I would recommend, if you can afford it, is a twin disk version. The single disk fills up far too fast and transferring files is a problem. The other problem is the disk access light. This appears to go off only when the machine is reset or drive B is accidentally selected.

One thing the mainframe does have is a cooling fan. I arrived at this conclusion because of the amazing racket it made. In a noisy office this may not be too bad but in a quiet room it sounds as though the power is being supplied to the system by a diesel generator with a faulty silencer. As with the faulty keyboard, Sanyo says this is a one-off and due to the machine being moved around a lot.

Some of the system's good points are its size, and the positioning of the power switch. The former is about the size of a smallish video cassette recorder, the latter is at the front of the case, not stuck at the back. You do not need to be a contortionist to switch on the machine.

Overall the machine ran well and without any hitches. One word of warning to those of you who like to type ahead, the keyboard buffer appears to be rather limited and typing while disk access is going on causes letters to be missed.

Sanyo seems to have a dealer network set up to cover this machine. Both Logitech and SDC will be dealers and as soon as all the software arrives from Japan the machine should be up for sale.

The Sanyo MBC550 is a nice machine, for the price. The fact that it includes most of the business software anyone would need will make it very appealling for business applications. Most users will find the single disk version a bit limiting and those who have had experience with other machines that run WordStar etc will probably find its slow speed a little irritating at first. This does not appear to be the MBC's fault, it is more the fault of the porting of the software from other systems.

Whether the keyboard will stand up to the hammering of constant use can only be answered in time. After using it for a couple of hours you do tend to adapt to the idiosyncracies of any machine and I suppose this keyboard is not too bad. It could just have been better.

The main thing to note about the MBC550 is that it is not an IBM compatible. It is more of a cheap vehicle for standard MSDOS. It is pretty good value for money, considering the bundled software, it's ability to run MSDOS and its compactness.