I recently picked up this computer at the local FreeGeek Twin Cities for only $120. You don't see these too often. It was ComputerLand's first house brand computer released in 1986. It was manufactured by Sambo Computer in Korea where it was sold as the TrimGem 88. What made this computer different is the motherboard is basically just a backplane with an 8088 CPU Card, much like the earlier S100 computers were. There was also a BC286 which used the exact same chassis, but had 286 CPU Card instead. I had some challenges to get past with this computer. Firstly was finding any real documentation. Luckily I found this blog post which thoroughly covers this computer including dip switch settings for the CPU Card. I had to run it through Google Translate, but it came out in perfect English.
m.blog.naver.com
There is small circuit board with two LEDs in the front which also has the keyboard lock and RTC battery. There was a lot of battery leakage and unfortunately the circuit board has some damage. I removed the Ni-Cad battery, but I afraid the damage is done as the LEDs do not work anymore.
The unit came with the following ISA cards:
8088 CPU Card (Basically the motherboard and the RTC is on here as well)
Color/Mono video card
Multi I/O card (Serial, Parallel, Floppy and 640K Memory)
5.25" 360K floppy drive
It also came with an amber monochrome monitor, but it only powered on once and has since stopped working. The memory on the Mutli I/O does not pass memory tests I run with CheckIt 3.0, so it has some bad ram and I will have to check those memory chips with my Retro Chip Tester Pro. The ram chips are all 150ns.
I decided to just swap out parts with parts I had on hand. Here is what the current specs are now:
NEC V20@8MHz (Replacing the 8088-2)
Intel 8087-1@8MHz
Lo-Tech 1MB ISA card (Jumpered for 640K plus 64K@D000 for UMBs)
Lo-Tech 2MB EMS ISA card @E000 for the EMS Page Frame
ATI VGA Edge 8 ISA VGA card
IBM floppy drive controller
Everex EV-170 Multi I/O card (Serial, Parallel & RTC)
Sound Blaster 16 CT4170 sound card
Xircom PE310BT Parallel Port Ethernet Adapter
The heart and soul of this computer is the CPU Card, so swapping out the other components was not that big of deal. I do plan down the road to put the Multi I/O card back in after replacing the rams chips with faster 100ns ones. I also plan to put a No Slot Clock underneath the ROM socket on the CPU Card. This will bring the computer back to a bit more original state. Overall I am really happy with how this build turned out. I have all the original parts, so the computer can be put back to 100% original condition at any time. Here a a few pictures and some benchmark results from TOPBENCH .40c and CheckIt 3.0.
Trigem 88 II 수출용 모델 BC-88 간만에 살려보기 (Featuring Trigem 88+ Deluxe)
! 삼보컴퓨터하면 우리나라 PC역사에서 상당히 중요한 역할을 하였던 기업이다. 국내 최초 퍼스널컴퓨터...
m.blog.naver.com
There is small circuit board with two LEDs in the front which also has the keyboard lock and RTC battery. There was a lot of battery leakage and unfortunately the circuit board has some damage. I removed the Ni-Cad battery, but I afraid the damage is done as the LEDs do not work anymore.
The unit came with the following ISA cards:
8088 CPU Card (Basically the motherboard and the RTC is on here as well)
Color/Mono video card
Multi I/O card (Serial, Parallel, Floppy and 640K Memory)
5.25" 360K floppy drive
It also came with an amber monochrome monitor, but it only powered on once and has since stopped working. The memory on the Mutli I/O does not pass memory tests I run with CheckIt 3.0, so it has some bad ram and I will have to check those memory chips with my Retro Chip Tester Pro. The ram chips are all 150ns.
I decided to just swap out parts with parts I had on hand. Here is what the current specs are now:
NEC V20@8MHz (Replacing the 8088-2)
Intel 8087-1@8MHz
Lo-Tech 1MB ISA card (Jumpered for 640K plus 64K@D000 for UMBs)
Lo-Tech 2MB EMS ISA card @E000 for the EMS Page Frame
ATI VGA Edge 8 ISA VGA card
IBM floppy drive controller
Everex EV-170 Multi I/O card (Serial, Parallel & RTC)
Sound Blaster 16 CT4170 sound card
Xircom PE310BT Parallel Port Ethernet Adapter
The heart and soul of this computer is the CPU Card, so swapping out the other components was not that big of deal. I do plan down the road to put the Multi I/O card back in after replacing the rams chips with faster 100ns ones. I also plan to put a No Slot Clock underneath the ROM socket on the CPU Card. This will bring the computer back to a bit more original state. Overall I am really happy with how this build turned out. I have all the original parts, so the computer can be put back to 100% original condition at any time. Here a a few pictures and some benchmark results from TOPBENCH .40c and CheckIt 3.0.
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