12 Oct
1999
12 Oct
'99
6:11 p.m.
WOW! Great Timing on the infor for the Amstrad Website..
I can't believe you guys are on the subject of Amstrad PC6400..
A PPC640 ? At least that's what it was called in the UK.
I just purchased one at the local Thrift store
yesterday for $4.04
and when I got to the checkout line the lady told me it was half price
day so for only $2.02 I got this really cool Portable XT dual
720KB floppies, and a nice LCD screen..
It's a reasonable machine. I've been known to use mine as a terminal, or
to run a drive exerciser program (with the parallel port connected to
some signals of the drive-under-test), etc.
I have the manuals for it (somewhere), including the software tech manual
and the service manual. It's pretty close to one of the Amstrad desktop
XT clones -- it's even got the same ASICs in it IIRC.
Very impressive machine for 1987..
And it appears to run on standard D batteries for portable use..
I thought it was C cells, but I might be wrong. Do you have the 2 plastic
tubes that hold the cells together? I've never tried running it on
batteries, since it takes 10 cells (!) and they don't last long.
On the back are 2 power input connectors. The coaxial one is for a
12V-ish input, centre +ve, which is what I normally use (from my bench PSU).
The 14 pin DIN is a power input (all sorts of _regulated_ voltages) from
an Amstrad PC monitor. It's probably best to ignore this.
Oh yes, the power switch on the top is really a changeover from batteries
to external PSU. It seems a little odd at first.
-tony