Greetings and welcome to an LGR Monday morning project. I have this lovely
little BMC monitor from 1982, the BM-12A. And I picked this up on episode 39 of LGR
Thrifts at a local junk shop for $10. It had been sitting there for ages and it
didn't have a price tag, it was behind a bunch of crap and nobody wanted it, but I did!
You know, "manufactured in July of 1982!" It is indeed a composite monochrome display,
you can see the little input right there. And it is a green phosphor monochrome
80-column wonderful little thing for... I mean, it's made for a bunch of different
computers. Of course, Apple ][s, Commodore VIC-20s, just whatever you wanted to hook up to
it that had composite video. But of course you can use it for any number of
things, which I don't know what I'm gonna use it for yet. I do have an Apple ][ Plus
that I would like to plug up to this at some point. And obviously though it needs
a bit of cleaning. I mean just touching it here it's friggin nasty. And you know
other than that it's in pretty good shape.
Like everything's here, you know, all the knobs and most of the plastic is still
intact. A little clip here broke off which, it doesn't really need that, looks
like that used to be like where an aerial, an antenna might have clicked into place.
And then this right here, the right hand side part of where the power cord would
wrap around that, broke off. Let's go ahead and get this thing cleaned up, and I
don't know. I don't know what I'm gonna do with this video, it's just I wanted to
do something with this because it's been sitting there looking all cool with its
atomic logo here. And you know I've just been kind of curious as well about BMC
as a company. You know just doing a little bit of research and it turns out they
advertised pretty heavily back in the early 80s, especially 1982. "If high
resolution is required, install a BMC color / green monitor in your system."
They also made RGB interface boards as well for the Apple 2. "BMC USA
Incorporated in Los Angeles," and they also had a New York office.
Other than this though I can't find much about them. I'm assuming that these were
just like, TV sets that were sort of, you know black and white and then
retrofitted with some green phosphor and whatever else to make it work for a
computer monitor. And then they just sort of slapped this on the front of it.
In fact is this coming off? I believe it is. Heh, oh dear. Um...
Okay! Well that confirms my suspicions, this was definitely a TV set. So that's what
that is. Presumably the speaker went here and then they just covered that up it
looks like with a little, like, a plastic covering of a grille of some
kind here. You know it's an interesting thing, a lot of old monitors had this
kind of approach where they were just a TV set retrofitted to turn into computer
monitors. So they weren't necessarily dedicated monitors, which is where other
different kind of monitors came into play, like the Amdek. See there's the
BMC BM-12A and then the Amdeks. Amdek made some that were actual TTL monitors.
In fact they were probably the first company to do that, at least in the US,
making these displays as dedicated displays for computers. As opposed to
just a retrofit TV. RadioShack was pretty famous for having done that for
their original display for the TRS-80 in 1977, but apparently BMC did that as well.
And you can see that it was sold for $114.95
I believe this is from June of 1982 here when this ad was published. And there
were a bunch of them, check this one out here there's also--right there, "BMC
12-inch green monitor," it had gone down to $99.95 in this edition of Micro magazine
in November of 1982. And then by 1983 they had gone down even more, you can see
this 12A going for eighty four dollars and fifty cents. And I've seen them down
as low as like 80 bucks, so yeah they just kept dropping pretty rapidly as
these types of displays were no longer as valuable. And crisper, cleaner, more
purpose-built, dedicated monitors we're hitting the
market. So yeah. Let's go ahead and start cleaning this lovely little thing and
get this reattached. So yeah we're using some of these electronic wipes.
[wiping electronics, with a wipe]
The front of this is going to be particularly gross I believe, just looking at
the caked on material here, and how it feels... Eyeugh.
Oh yeah.
[wiping down continues, sped up]
[more sped-up wiping of electronics]
Curious if those knobs come off...
[thunk] Yep.
[more wiping... that's kinda the whole idea for this video]
Hehe. Gonna save the back for last!
[chuckles] Yep! [groans in slight cleaning bliss]
All right well that's just an initial wipe down, so. Let's get in all those grooves now.
[fresh toothbrush package ripping open]
[isopropyl alcohol dips ahoy]
[scrub scrub scrub]
[scrubscrubscrubscrubscruuuuub]
[...do ya like jazz?]
[kerplunk!] It's already looking way better.
That's one reason I got it, it actually wasn't in
terrible shape, but gonna use one of these Magic Erasers to just lightly go
over some of the iffier spots like this right here.
That's one of the few spots -- I don't know how visible that is, that's barely visible even to me...
it's started to kinda crack. Just aging plastic.
This part has a textured surface to it so I don't want to scuff it too much.
It also makes these little marks harder to get out.
That's a little bit paint. Presumably where it was rubbing up
against the wall in an office or something. Seen that pretty often on the
back of these CRTs with a bulge in the back.
Well that's most of it. The rest is just going to be getting in
all these little corners and grooves.
Oh yeah. This is looking good.
Yeah these are looking good too!
Oh... I guess that'll need
to be glued back on as well. Hehe.
Isn't that just a great logo and badge and just, everything? It's so cool.
Yeah!
Can't forget the power cable.
Yeah, look at that.
All right looking pretty good to me
And since I know somebody's going to ask to see inside...
Just a few screws and we'll take a look and see what that looks like.
Get that little guy down in there. And we'll be careful cuz, y'know, CRTS.
But yeah check it out. Was in pretty decent shape externally,
all things considered. And internally it looks, I mean, practically like new.
It looks really nice. The tube is an NEC model. And there's a look at all the
delectable internals. Mm, fuses, transformers, all sorts of good stuff.
Now the matter of getting these little badges reattached. And I have some
Gorilla Gel. Maybe not the best solution in the world but I know it'll hold.
Oh yeah.
Good stuff. Maybe I should've tried to get rid of the gunk underneath
first but whatever man. This will work.
Aw yeah dude. That is satisfying.
Just got of one of these little glass
cleaners here. Make sure it's all nice and streak-free.
Haha.
Oh this thing looks so good!
Look at that. I'm quite satisfied with it so let's hook it up to something and admire its greenness.
There we go! I thought that would be appropriate
considering the ][ Plus is one of the computers that it was advertised the
most alongside. This just uses composite once again so just got one end of the
cable plugging in right there. And the other plugging in right here on the
monitor. Okay! What a delightful looking setup, ahh.
Let's see if it all works. [powers on monitor]
Well I know the monitor does, I haven't tested this Apple 2
Plus in a long time. [powers on Apple 2, beeping]
Nice. All right got some brightness here.
And contrast! Yeah. Nice crispy green.
Now the question is, do I have anything to boot? Hmm.
So I just remembered I have this FloppyEmu hanging around, which is a
floppy disk drive emulator for various Apple computers. So we can play some
Oregon Trail without having to use any actual disks. How convenient.
Let's see, first name would be me. Whoops.
Yeah this keyboard needs a bit of fixin'
because I'll just be able to press like -- well that that worked.
Yeah... [hitting keys]
The keys... wow yeah they don't always respond. That is one of the things I need
to get fixed on here. Just go with whatever it gives me. That's fine.
And we'll spend some money at Matt's General Store. Technically all we need is
one yoke of oxen to continue so ah [laughs]
Let's go for it!
[Yankee Doodles beeps on the Apple 2 speaker]
♪ ♫Ernp eh dernt dernt, yep this is really loud♪ ♫
Okay, we've got this going on.
Of course I'm gonna change the pace. Let's go really fast. We'll see how
quickly we can die here. Found wild fruit, aw man we're already doing well.
Duke Nuke has a fever. Oh no!
Nah I don't want to look around, I wanna die.
Let's cross this river, let's just straight up ford it.
6.8 feet, no problem.
Ah yeah, if we don't die here or at least significantly get screwed up...
Ah there we go. Yeah.
We lost one ox and Duke Nuke. [chuckles] Excellent.
Well we only have one ox now
so that's half a yoke. Hmm. I guess we're still going, don't know how.
A thief comes during the night and steals one oxen. That's the only thing we had left!
Well. You're unable to continue the journey. You have no oxen to pull the wagon.
Well daggone, that's exactly what I thought would happen! [laughs]
Let's see, there's not much we can do here. You must trade for an ox to be able to continue, well yeah, but.
I don't have anything to trade with, huh. Let's rest for nine days because yeah. I can't continue
on the trail. Monitor has exhaustion. BMC has typhoid.
Oh no BMC monitor! Monitor died. Nope it's still very much okay. You know, go figure.
When you're trying to die in this game it actually does take a little while.
Yeah like, days are just going on by and -- who's Jed? Oh yeah it just generated
some random names for me. I have exhaustion. I have died.
Welp.
[Apple speaker beeps out "Taps"] [LGR vocally joins in]
What'd I like on my tombstone? Well "peperony and chease" is the obvious
choice but that has already been taken. "The CRT... was green."
Oh my goodness this keyboard. [laughs at keyboard not working]
There we go. N-n-n-no! No changes!
All right I did exactly what I set out to
accomplish. I feel accomplished. So yeah that's pretty much it for this lovely
little monitor and this debatably lovely little video. Although it's probably not
little at this point cuz it's just a relaxed, unscripted ramble and that's how
it goes. We can go into BASIC though. Well, if the keyboard worked.
Yaaaay.
I definitely wanna cover this machine at some point in the future, and my other
Apple ][s with monitors like this. That's really why I wanted to restore it.
Not only does it just look awesome I think, but it deserves to be used in
future episodes. So stick around for those if you'd like, although I don't
know when those may or may not be coming along. But there are new videos every
Monday and Friday here on LGR. And as always thank you very much for watching!