I have the HX20 service manual....
And I thought I was good at tormenting people. ;)
Hopefully I won't have any repair questions, but I can't imagine the
battery pack is still OK after years of sitting, but didn't give much
thought to checking them. Both of the hamfests I attend each month have a
couple of battery guys with tons on old nicads etc., plus Radio shack sells
them $7.95 a pair new.
There is an internal NiCd battery, it's 4 Sub-C
cells soldered/welded
together and wired to a plug on the mainboard. It's not hard to make a
replacement pack if it fails. The 'regulation' on the Vcc line depends on
the fact that the NiCd will limit the voltage when it's on charge (the
entire machine is CMOS, so regulation isn't that critical). So don't
attempt to charge the machine without the battery in place.
Can you tell me much about the AC adapter? (why is it the adapter always
gets lost. I didn't get one with the PowerBook 5300CS I bought last
Saturday either.) I wonder if a generic adapter will be OK to use?
Skiwriter is an option, presumably an extra ROM plugged
into the spare
socket inside. There should also be a machine code monitor in ROM (select
1 from the startup menu). The BASIC is pretty standard Microsoft, with a
few extras (that I can look up) for things like controlling the cassette,
turning on/off individual pixels on the display, etc.
The printer is, indeed 20 characters wide.
The 'serial' port (5 pin) is used to connect the machine to a TF20 floppy
disk drive normally. You can also (IIRC) interconnect 2 machines by this
port.
That sounds like an item nice to find, but I am figuring out a scheme to
hook many older systems up via an inhouse BBS running to the serial ports.
The RS232 port is what it claims to be. It's an 8
pin DIN, and plugs are
I remember this as the number one feature, so people could use these as
remote terminals controlling all sorts of odd bits. I may not find a
correct cable, but finding a connector should be easy in this surplus rich
part of world. (SoCal is a huge dumping ground of old gear).
BTW how on earth do you end up with a HX-20 service manual and no HX-20?
Thanks, Mike Ford