website/content/museum/sanyo-mbc-1000.md

---
title: Sanyo MBC-1000
categories:
- Computers
types:
- Professional Computer
origins:
- Japan
years:
- '1982'
cpus:
- Z80A
params:
  name: MBC-1000
  image: /media/museum/photos/sanyo_mbc1000_running_s1.jpg
  company: /companies/sanyo
  company_name: Sanyo
  specs:
  - label: NAME
    value: MBC-1000
  - label: MANUFACTURER
    value: Sanyo
  - label: TYPE
    value: Professional Computer
  - label: ORIGIN
    value: Japan
  - label: YEAR
    value: '1982'
  - label: BUILT IN LANGUAGE
    value: SBASIC II (Microsoft Basic with additional commands specific to the system)
  - label: KEYBOARD
    value: Typewriter type, 83 keys with numeric keypad, 5 function keys & arrow keys
  - label: CPU
    value: Z80A
  - label: SPEED
    value: 4 MHz
  - label: RAM
    value: 64 KB
  - label: VRAM
    value: 2 KB (video) + 2 KB (character generator)
  - label: ROM
    value: 2 KB
  - label: TEXT MODES
    value: 80 columns x 25 lines (8x8 dots character matrix. Programmable character generator)
  - label: GRAPHIC MODES
    value: None
  - label: COLORS
    value: Monochrome green phosphore (12'' non-glare monitor)
  - label: SOUND
    value: built-in Buzzer
  - label: SIZE / WEIGHT
    value: |-
      Main unit: 40.5 (W) x 31.7 (H) x 35.7 (D) cm / 14 kg\
      Keyboard: 41 (W) x 7.6 (H) x 21.1 (D) cm / 3.5 Kg
  - label: I/O PORTS
    value: Parallel printer, external FDD unit, Serial RS232 (1200-8500 BPS baud rate)
  - label: BUILT IN MEDIA
    value: Built-in 5.25'' 327 KB floppy-disk drive
  - label: OS
    value: CP/M 2.2
  - label: POWER SUPPLY
    value: Built-in, switching power supply unit (45 W)
  - label: PERIPHERALS
    value: Up to 5 expansion cards, up to three 5''1/4 or two 8'' drives can be added
  - label: PRICE
    value: |-
      $1500 (fall 1982, USA)\
      $3,995 (1983, USA) - includes a second 5 1/4 inch drive, a daisy wheel printer, the software package and 8 hours of instructions in WordStar, CalcStar and installation
  tabs:
  - photos
  - adverts
  photos:
  - title: MBC-1000
    subtitle: ''
    text: ''
    image: /media/museum/photos/sanyo_mbc1000_system_s2.jpg
  - title: RUNNING
    subtitle: ''
    text: The MBC-1000 is running the CalcStar spreadsheet installation program.
    image: /media/museum/photos/sanyo_mbc1000_running_s2.jpg
  - title: SIDE VIEW
    subtitle: ''
    text: ''
    image: /media/museum/photos/sanyo_mbc1000_sideview_s1.jpg
  - title: TOP VIEW
    subtitle: ''
    text: ''
    image: /media/museum/photos/sanyo_mbc1000_topview_s1.jpg
  - title: FRONT PANEL
    subtitle: ''
    text: All the computers of the 1000 series were called "Creative Computer".
    image: /media/museum/photos/sanyo_mbc1000_plate_s1.jpg
  - title: KEYBOARD CLOSE-UP
    subtitle: ''
    text: The MBC-1000 had a complete and indestructible keyboard.
    image: /media/museum/photos/sanyo_mbc1000_keyboard_s1.jpg
  - title: REAR PANEL
    subtitle: ''
    text: The black vertical connector is the one of the Serial RS-232 expansion card.
    image: /media/museum/photos/sanyo_mbc1000_rearside_s1.jpg
  - title: INSIDE
    subtitle: ''
    text: |-
      The double-sided, double density floppy drive is a YE-DATA model.\
      The switching PSU is located below the floppy drive.\
      Three expansion cards could be added next to the Serial card.\
      The main board slides under the video card and can be easily removed from the case.
    image: /media/museum/photos/sanyo_mbc1000_inside_s1.jpg
  - title: MAIN BOARD
    subtitle: ''
    text: |-
      A traditional design which uses only standard circuits.

      **(1)** Power connector\
      **(2)** Floppy drive connector\
      **(3)** I/O connector. Provides the connection with expansion cards\
      **(4)** 2 KB ROM chip. Holds the Initial Program Loader which allows CP/M OS to be automatically loaded\
      **(5)** Z80A processor, here a NEC D780 version\
      **(6)** 64 KB user RAM chips (4 x 4164)\
      **(7)** Hitachi HD46505 display controller. Motorola 6845 equivalent\
      **(8)** 4 KB video RAM chips (2x6116)\
      **(9)** Fujitsu MB8876 floppy-disk controller\
      **(10)** 8255 PIA - Programmable Interface Adapter, used for keyboard, Parallel port and sound generation\
      **(11)** Buzzer.
    image: /media/museum/photos/sanyo_mbc1000_mainboard_s2.jpg
  - title: MICROPRO SOFTWARE
    subtitle: ''
    text: |-
      MBC-1000 original system diskette along with some popular Micropro CP/M software:\
      • **WordStar**, word processor\
      • **MailMerge**, file merging and form letters creation\
      • **CalcStar**, spreadsheet\
      • **DataStar**, database management\
      • **ReportStar**, DataStar reports
    image: /media/museum/photos/sanyo_mbc1000_diskettes_s1.jpg
  - title: MBC1000 WITH EFD 160
    subtitle: ''
    text: |-
      This is an MBC-1000 with its EFD-160 (external 5.25'' floppy drive). The picture was taken by its owner Chris Collman in 2006.

      He remembers: "This was my first PC and used it in our garment manufacturing business. I bought a package that included an MBC-1000, second external 5 1/4 floppy drive, daisy wheel printer, installation and something like 8 hours of instruction for around $4,000 (1983 or 4?). I would guess the retail price of just the computer as pictured was around $2,000. We used CalcStar for our costings and WordStar for letters and stuff like that. In June 2006, I dismantled all the parts and took it to the recycle center, along with my Kaypro which replaced it. Heavy steel construction, very little plastic. I still have my custom boot disk and WordStar program disk, just to impress other old timers !"

      Thanks to Chris Collman for this picture
    image: /media/museum/photos/sanyo_mbc1000_collman.jpg
  adverts:
  - title: US BROCHURE (RECTO)
    subtitle: ''
    text: Thanks to Chris Collman for this picture
    image: /media/museum/pubs/sanyo_mbc1000_brochure_1.jpg
  - title: US BROCHURE (VERSO)
    subtitle: ''
    text: Thanks to Chris Collman for this picture
    image: /media/museum/pubs/sanyo_mbc1000_brochure_2.jpg
  comments:
  - author: Colin Smith (United Kingdom)
    date: Monday 29th June 2020
    text: I wrote a motor insurance quotation system for the mbc-1000. It had all the cars, 40 insurers and all the age ranges etc. How I fitted it all on one floppy disk frightens me now. It worked and sold loads of them - made someone else (my boss) a fortune!
  - author: mr philip sempers (United Kingdom)
    date: Saturday 12th January 2019
    text: |-
      There is one for sale on eBay item number:163474461601

      Seems like it is rare as hens teeth and I am only a few miles from it. Don''t have the money to get it tho :(
  - author: James Smith (Idaho, USA)
    date: Thursday 18th October 2018
    text: The user manuals were interestingly written. A friend opined that a nephew of the Sanyo president who was taking English in Tokyo High School, and not doing well, wrote them. I still chuckle at the memories of deciphering them.
  - author: R H SMITH (United States)
    date: Wednesday 21st September 2016
    text: |-
      I HAD A SANYO CPM COMPUTER AT ONE TIME.

      I RECORDED A BUNCH OF DATA ON FLOPPY DISKS MANY YEARS AGO. i WOULD LIKE TO FIND SOMEONE WITH A CPM MACHING THAT COULD READ THE DISKS AND TRANSFER TO A DISK FOR ''WINDOWS 10'' .

      IF YOU COULD REFER ME TO ANYONE ON THIS SUBJECT, I WOULD APPRECIATE IT.

      R H SMITH\
      RHSMITH001@YAHOO.COM
  - author: Tim Blakey (California)
    date: Monday 28th September 2015
    text: |-
      My oldest brother sold computers in the university bookstore at UOP in the early 1980''s. As an undergraduate, he spent much time teaching university professors how to set up and use their computers. He came into possession of a Sanyo MBC1000 through this connection, and gifted the computer to me in 1986 when he upgraded to a better system.

      I loved this machine, my first computer, and it seemed quite magical to me. Even though the Macintosh had been out for two years, I didn''t have one. So to me, my giant MBC1000 felt like a piece of science fiction made real, with its softly glowing green screen and the intermittent crackle-hum of the floppy drives. It was also extremely practical.

      It not only had the built-in 5.25" floppy, but it also came to me complete with a daisy-chained external 5.25" drive, a sprocket-fed dot matrix printer, a box of white continuous paper and a stack of floppies.

      From that point forward I wrote every school report in WordStar, printed in low-res dots on perforated paper. I no longer had to re-type pages every time I made an edit. In fact, I don''t think I ever used my typewriter again.

      But best of all were a collection of three floppies titled ZORK, ZORK II and ZORK III. These games were an instant hit with me, an AD$D geek, and fan of Choose Your Own Adventure books. I learned a lot about how to design games from playing these repeatedly, and guessing at the game''s vocabulary.

      I was an art student, and intimidated by the prospect of learning SBASIC. Little did I know that computers would later completely take over the commercial art and design world.

      The machine was so large it was like having another roommate. I remember lugging the hulking block of metal and glass from apartment-to-apartment for years. At first it wouldn''t even fit on my small writing desk, so It lived on the floor, and I would spend hours laying on the carpet in front of it playing those games or typing. Sometimes it would occupy my drafting table for serious report-writing, and I eventually built a custom desk that held all of the components on perfectly-sized shelves.

      For some reason, I still have the main shelf thirty years later. But sadly, the computer is long-since gone, replaced by a used Macintosh IIcx in 1990. The dot-matrix printer developed a clogged row, and stopped printing descenders. So for a while I had to manually draw every descender with a pencil.

      I still have the IIcx, and nearly every computer and laptop I''ve owned since then, but the one computer I miss the most was my mechanical roommate.
  - author: Doug Neumann (USA)
    date: Saturday 8th August 2015
    text: In the early 80''s I was employed at an office supply store in the college town of Menomonie, Wisconsin, home to UW Stout. We had started out selling the Timex-Sinclair 1000, graduated to the Commodore VIC20, and eventually advanced to the Commodore 64, the Sanyo MBC-1000, and the NEC APC, which was directed solely at the business market. We even had a Compaq Portable PC - or ''luggable'' as it was often referred to. I always liked the little Sanyo, as the MicroPro software was very user-friendly, and the SBasic it shipped with was easy enough for someone like me to get a handle on. I wrote an interactive SBasic program that would scroll through a number of pages of the Sanyo''s selling points, and even had an ''input page'' that was displayed anytime a key was pressed, so customers could type in their name, which would trigger a sub-routine that ''personalized'' their computer shopping experience. If their first name happened to be the same as one of our staff, an additional sub-routine
      would be triggered that was intended to offer them some degree of familiarity with a sales person before actual contact - I had noticed that people were often self-conscious about their lack of knowledge about the emerging technology. Even though we sold a lot of the Commodore merchandise, and even some of the very pricey NEC business systems, we never did have a ''taker'' on the Sanyo, and it eventually got relegated to printing mailing labels for sales flyers promoting office supply products. I had always hoped that I''d be able to buy the little system for home use, but it was probably best that I didn''t - technology evolved quickly, and it was soon obsolete, at least as a home computer. Still, I loved the solidly-built little system - especially the metal-encased keyboard. Fond memories indeed...
  - author: Otto Fobian (South Africa)
    date: Thursday 4th April 2013
    text: |-
      The MBC-1000 was also my first "real" computer. I had been fiddling with Z-80 type stuff but never achieved anything useful. Being a radio ham at the time I interfaced my hf rig to the "1000" and wrote a morse code "reader" in assembler. It was very good at tracking speed and variations in transmission technique. Later I wrote a morse sender as well. Amateur Packet Radio became popular and I wrote several apps for receiving and sending for that too. I had a budgie as a pet which learned the sound of the keyboard clicks. She would sit on the monitor and click away as if typing furiously!!\
      Many nostalgic memories of those days.
  - author: Wolf W. Berger (Bavaria)
    date: Sunday 20th May 2012
    text: For me as a freelance translator working in Japan in 1982 the MBC (I had the 1200 with two floppy disc drives), one of the two types of daisy wheel printer offered by a Tokyo software house called Procom, and their adaption of Wordstar for different languages, this was the very first affordable machine for German. I paid the equivalent of $5,000 for the package and it was all worth it because translation business was booming at that time in Japan. I scrapped the machine after 8 years of heavy duty having used up two keyboards and two floppy drives in the process.
  - author: writeroffthelake (Vanessa) (USA)
    date: Wednesday 10th September 2008
    text: My first computer was the Sanyo MBC-1000. You''re right, it had a very fast bootup. Great machine. I paid $1500 for it in, I believe, the fall of ''82 (maybe ''83). I had only 2 options for printers that would work with it and I still had to pay $60 for a parrallel cord to be custom made - they had to have my Sanyo manual. It took them a week to do the cord. I liked the machine so much that in 1985 I bought the more expensive "sister" to it - the Sanyo MBC-4050 because it had 2 floppy drives and double the memory. I sold the MBC-1000 for $150. I''m a freelance writer and I can tell you that the screen on that Sanyo, even when writing 12-15 hours a day, never gave me a headache or eye problems. It was always clear and easy to see, a big plus for a writer. Great computer and a good price - the same price as the Healthkit that was similar, but required you to build it. I was always glad I chickened out on building the Healthkit and bought the Sanyo MBC-1000.
  - author: Bruce Coulette (Earth)
    date: Monday 20th August 2007
    text: This machine was extremely rugged and reliable. Many cups of coffee on the keyboard did not kill it. I had a consulting business at the time and took a chance on buying a computer - of course, it made a tremendous difference. No more doing spreadsheets by hand, threw away my White-Out, etc. You always remember your first computer fondly, but this was a really good machine for its day and operating system (CP/M). The price you show was deeply discounted - I paid about $1,600 (no printer).
  - author: Chris Collman (USA)
    date: Tuesday 16th January 2007
    text: This was my first PC and used it in our garment manufacturing business. I bought a package that included an MBC-1000, second external 5 1/4 floppy drive, daisy wheel printer, installation and something like 8 hours of instruction for around $4,000 (1983 or 4?). I would guess the retail price of just the computer as pictured was around $2,000. We used CalcStar for our costings and WordStar for letters and stuff like that. In June 2006, I dismantled all the parts and took it to the recycle center, along with my Kaypro which replaced it. Heavy steel construction, very little plastic. I still have my custom boot disk and WordStar program disk, just to impress other old timers !
  - author: John Van Laer (Earth)
    date: Thursday 17th August 2006
    text: My parents worked as insurance brokers and had a Sanyo MBC 1000 for a while, I remember it well! We had insurance quotation software for it, plus Wordstar and an adventure game (called Adventur on the disk label, I think it was Classic Adventure for the CPC, for example). I've still got the software at home somewhere - with the eventual aim of connecting a 5.25" drive to a CPC6128 and using it that way - but the Sanyo machine disappeared long ago...
  oc_id: 1072
  source:
    url: https://web.archive.org/web/20230417011112/http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=1072
    date: '2023-04-17'
---

The MBC-1000 was the bottom-of-the-range system of a series of "Creative Computer" CP/M machines which was also comprised of the [11xx](/museum/sanyo-mbc-1100-1150/) and [12xx](/museum/sanyo-mbc-1200-1250/) ranges.

Although its design wasn't revolutionary, it was a well-built and reliable machine featuring a detachable keyboard, a 12-inch green monochrome screen and a single built-in 5.25, 327 KB floppy drive.

It ran CP/M 2.2 OS with a very fast boot up sequence. The OS was ready to run in less than five seconds after the machine was switched on. The whole family of Micropro software - WordStar, CalcStar, DataStar, ReportStar... was specially modified to fit MBC-1000 features. Sbasic, an extended Basic interpreter, was included into the CP/M master diskette.

Sanyo CP/M machines had a discreet life in business world and were gradually replaced by PC compatible systems.

Extracts from the marketing brochure:

\- Compact design integrating all the functions for multi-purpose applications\
\- Z-80A CPU ensures high-speed processing with no-wait mode\
\- A substantial library of business software has been developed in the United States to Sanyo's specifications. Sanyo will also offer word-processing, electronic spread-sheets, and related software to its distributor and dealer network. A user encyclopedia for the extensive, powerful SBASIC II is supplied with the machine. The Sanyo computer will support all CP/M compatible software and along with the appropriate interpreter or compiler, programs can be run in C-Basic, M-Basic, Fortran, Cobol, Forth and others. Sanyo will support and publish a list of approved software products to its dealers, distributors and end users.\
\- SBASIC II adds several additional commands and statements to those featured by Microsoft BASIC. The disket supplied includes a set of Check programs and Utilities allowing extra programming flexibility.\
\- Built-in floppy disk drive with file copy procedure can be expanded to incorporate up to three 5"1/4 or two 8" additional floppy disk drives. The expandability to over 2.3 MB of disk storage assures the capacity to meet your needs.\
\- Easy-to-operate typewriter-style keyboard with numeric pad and five function keys for easy program execution\
\- 12" non-glare green phosphor video display screen showing up to 256 standard and graphic characters. For special graphic or alpha-numeric needs, programmable character generator allows you to change any character to meet these requirements.\
\- Centronics parallel printer port, RS-232C serial port, and additional 5"1/4 floppy expansion disk port are standard.\
\- Additional interface cards are available for a parallel port or RS-232 port.\
\- The interface card for the EFD860F (additional 8" external drives) is packaged with the EFD860F

<table> <tr> <td></td> <td>We need more info about this computer ! If you designed, used, or have more info about this system, please send us pictures or anything you might find useful.</td> <td></td> </tr> </table>