This mini forum is intended to provide a simple means of discussion about the NCR  PC8 computer. If you want to share your own experience or memories, or add relevant information about this system: post a message!

For those trying to get one of these going - replace all the green Tantalum capacitors i had several go pop. I used the IBM 5170 circuit diagrams to trouble shoot its almost exactly the same. The speaker connection is P19 pin 1 SPK pin 4 GND. If your having clock issues and clock generator and support circuitry looks good try swapping out the KB controller it worked for me. Other things i had to replace on my board where Dram chips, RTC, 82284 Clock generator and some 74 series ic''s around clock. Hope this helps someone!

The user manual and some software https://oldcomputers.dyndns.org/public/pub/rechner/ncr/pc8/index.html Does anyone have ncr-dos 3.1?

I owned one of these. Built like a tank and served as a solid workhorse into the mid 1990''s. Replaced video with a Hercules board, had two HDDs and ran DR-DOS 6. The only one truly better for reliability was a CompuAdd that finally died in 2001.

I got one of these from a good friend back in 1992. It was used, but damn, it felt good. Must weigh 25 kg, so who needs a theft insurance! :)
The main harddisk is a seagate 30 MB ST4038 that alone weighs 3-4 kg, but its fitted with a *wow* ˝ height 40 MB Disk, that i had to partition, since DOS 3.3 cant handle it. Sincerely a PC from back when stuff was meant to be inherited by your children. To bad the "personality" board seems to have gone sour recently, but i dont think ill ever scrap it. I owe my possible grandchildren to see the difference of hitech from back then when they complain that my son is sayin that iPhone was top-of-the-pops when he was a kid.

regards, cep

My parents had one of those for their business, and it was a monstrous beast of a machine $ the picture really doesn''t do it justice, because the only thing showing scale is the equally monstrous keyboard (note function keys on the left AND all the way across the top, going from F1 to F30.) Theirs was equipped with 512KB from the factory, 20MB disk, 1.2MB 5.25" and dealer-installed Wangtek 60MB QIC-02 tape drive. NCR Graphics was exactly what Ryan May reports: doublescan CGA, 640x400, which made text mode much less wretched than it was with real CGA.

The case looks like a box but it was a work of art mechanically, with multi-part metal hinges for the front panel (hiding the cabinet lock, volume control, and third external 5.25" bay), a velcro-attached rear noise cover, and some serious powder coating inside and out. Extra feet were provided to turn it on its side to make a full tower. I don''t know what the breakdown on its power supply output was, but it had a "400W" sticker on the side of it. This thing was serious business! To this day I can still remember the merry hum of its stepper-drive Seagate.

It had ROM BASIC, and as with the other PCx machines, it actually showed what it was testing as it POSTed, a nice step up from the IBM PC and XT.

As I recall from the brochures my folks had, the system in that configuration ran north of $4500.

Used to work for NCR UK in Tech Support - the PC8 had a heavy metal case. As you lifted the lid off, the power switch would quite often get knocked off, exposing the metal switch contacts!! Not very safe!

I actually have one of these - was my first PC and it still works. Scary stuff.