27 Aug
2012
27 Aug
'12
11:23 a.m.
On 08/25/2012 04:04 PM, Tony Duell wrote:
I am not overly in love wit hthe design of the case. From what I remember
the floppy drives are fixed to the cover, you have to lift it a little
way and then unplug the data and poweer cables to get the case apart. But
I cna tolerate it.
It's the separate grounding strap (at least mine has one) which is the
pain, because it means flipping the whole upper part of the case over to
unscrew it - unplugging power and data can be done (as you say) by just
lifting the case a bit. (I wonder if some releases simply have no strap, or
have a tag screwed to the drive cable that the strap can easily be
unplugged from)
Ah yes, I think I remember tjhat now. Given the lack of space on my
workbench, I remember hodlign the top case (with the fairly heavy drvies
in it) with one and whill fiddlign the screw in wiot hthe other. All to
meet FCC ruquirements :-)
My favourite CP/M box is, I think, the Epson QX10.
Interesting hardware
at least. A 7220 for graphics, those lovely voice-coil floppy drives, etc.
I have a QX-10 on the desk here beside me; it really is a lovely machine
(despite the plastic case; somehow I always think that 'real' computers should
have metal cases). And yes, those drives are great (although I had
to clean/strip the eject mechanisms on mine; I suspect they're prone to
I stripped mine when I first got the machine, cleaned everything and id a
full alignment. Be warned that strippign the positioner is not recomended Well, to put it better, they're impossible (so
far) to find within
picking-up distance, which means paying shipping costs for one - I pretty
much am in the middle of nowhere! I'd like one at some stage, but I haven't
Ah... That expalisn it.
quite ruled out one turning up locally[1] yet. One day
I may just have to
bite the bullet an pay to have one shipped to me.
[1] oddly, one of the local car parts stores - not long opened, either -
has one, but I couldn't see what model; I can understand a pre-existing
store perhaps having one, but I was a little surprised that for new
businesses there wasn't some more recent alternative.
IIRC, such printers are either still being made, or have only recently
been discontinued. Their advantaeg is that they will aprt on multi-part
(carbon copy) forms, and some businssses still use those. Yes, you could
print out 3 separate pages on an inkjet or laser printer in less time,
but I guess businesses like the idea that all 3 copies (or whatever) were
printed together so they must be the same.
I did get the HI-80 plotter with mine, but of course with pens that are
long dried up (and a bit of experimenting with engineering alternatives
hasn't found me the right combination of pen body and ink consistency yet).
I have one of htose somewhere, I need to find out more about it. And
indeed find how to make pens for it.
-tony