On Thursday 22 December 2005 05:55 pm, Tony Duell wrote:
I am currently working on an Epson PX8 system. I
bought this on E-bay, so
the history is essentially unknown, but I was told it was 'untested'
which I took to mean non-working.
Speaking of which, I have one of those I'd forgotten to include in my list I
posted a while back. It used to work, doesn't work any more -- when I
attempt to turn it on I get a low battery message, even if it's been plugged
in to charge for a long time. Know where I might find some tech info on the
innards of the thing?
<...>
With it, I got a PF10 floppy drive. This is a single
3.5" unit, with a
38400 baud serial interdace back to the PX8.
I'd love to find a drive for one of those. :-)
I had to make up my own cable, but I have checked and
double-checked it, and
anyway it works fine to link a PX8 to a PX4 via the RS232 interfaces
(essentially the same pinout as the 'high speed' serial interface to the
disk drive). In fact what I did was make up a cable from the 8 pin nini-DIN
plug to fit the PX8 to a DB25 plug,, wired as a DTE and a second cable with
a DB25 socket to a 8 pin mini-DIN, wired to do the right swaps and jumpers.
I got a couple of connectors a while back, but my eyesight isn't what it used
to be, so I never did make up any cables. Do you have specific cable wiring
info, assuming I can get this thing working?
<...>
Assuming it's like a 68xx processor, with reset
and interrupt vectors at the
top of memory, that looks sane too.
I have a databook around here someplace that details those chips, there's a
lot of differences for very small differences in the part number, but yeah,
they're basically a variant of the 6800-series parts. And CMOS.
<...>
(Yes, I know about PC-based emulators for these
drives, but I'd like to
get the real unit working too).
First I've heard of those. If I can get mine working, that would be a nice
way to store some data. What pc-based platform do they work under?
--
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space, a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin