9 Aug
2010
9 Aug
'10
7:51 p.m.
All the boxes finally arrived (and I still have to go through
everything), but I am the proud owner of an Epson QX-10... with
original manuals, newsletters from a users group and a nice collection
of software... CP/M, Valdocs 2, Valdocs 3, dBase II, PeachText,
Uniform and a bunch of other diskettes (easily 7 or 8 of the 10-disk
holders).
I'll post pictures and more info as I go through the boxes, but this
is quite exciting!
Mark
9 Aug
9 Aug
7:58 p.m.
On 8/9/10 10:51 PM, Mark Davidson wrote:
All the boxes finally arrived (and I still have to go
through
everything), but I am the proud owner of an Epson QX-10... with
original manuals, newsletters from a users group and a nice collection
of software... CP/M, Valdocs 2, Valdocs 3, dBase II, PeachText,
Uniform and a bunch of other diskettes (easily 7 or 8 of the 10-disk
holders).
I'll post pictures and more info as I go through the boxes, but this
is quite exciting!
Neat! Good score! I always thought Valdocs was good stuff, and
wondered why it never made it farther than it did. Make it quick with
the pics! :)
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
Port Charlotte, FL
10:10 p.m.
On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 7:58 PM, Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote:
On 8/9/10 10:51 PM, Mark Davidson wrote:
It will take me a few days, but I'll get it done...
Mark
All the boxes finally arrived (and I still have
to go through
everything), but I am the proud owner of an Epson QX-10... with
original manuals, newsletters from a users group and a nice collection
of software... CP/M, Valdocs 2, Valdocs 3, dBase II, PeachText,
Uniform and a bunch of other diskettes (easily 7 or 8 of the 10-disk
holders).
I'll post pictures and more info as I go through the boxes, but this
is quite exciting!
?Neat! ?Good score! ?I always thought Valdocs was good stuff, and
wondered why it never made it farther than it did. ?Make it quick with
the pics! :) 
10 Aug
10 Aug
11:54 a.m.
All the boxes finally arrived (and I still have to go through
everything), but I am the proud owner of an Epson QX-10... with
Nice machine. The QX10 is one of my favourite desktop CP/M machines. The
video system is based round a 7220, the serial port (IIRC) uses a 7201.
amd it's got those lovely 1/3 height floppy drives with linear positioners
(like tiny RK05s...)
One thing to be aware of. The video board cna use wither 4116s or 4164s
-- 16 of either, all must be the same type. There are some obvious links
to move if you upgrade the RAM (if you don't shift them, you'll ruin the
4164s by applying 12V to them!), but there are also some decoupling
capacitors that _must_ be removed if you use 4164s. If not, you get ome
odd corruption after the screen has scrolled a few times. Don't ask how I
found this out...
I think the heardware manual is on the web somewhere, so I won't have to
say 'fourth bookshelf, between the CoCo3 service manaul and the HP5245
counter manaul' :-)
original manuals, newsletters from a users group and a
nice collection
of software... CP/M, Valdocs 2, Valdocs 3, dBase II, PeachText,
I beleive there are offiically different keyboards for CP/M and Valdocs.
My QX10 came with CP/M, I have never seen Valdocs. I seem to recall it
was reported as being somewhat slow, wann't it written in a TIL, not
machine code?
-tony
12:37 p.m.
On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 11:54 AM, Tony Duell <ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote:
Always good to have more info... :)
That's my understanding as well. I haven't looked at the keyboard yet.
All the boxes finally arrived (and I still have to go through
everything), but I am the proud owner of an Epson QX-10... with
Nice machine. The QX10 is one of my favourite desktop CP/M machines. The
video system is based round a 7220, the serial port (IIRC) uses a 7201.
amd it's got those lovely 1/3 height floppy drives with linear positioners
(like tiny RK05s...) One thing to be aware of. The video board cna use
wither 4116s or 4164s
-- 16 of either, all must be the same type. There are some obvious links
to move if you upgrade the RAM (if you don't shift them, you'll ruin the
4164s by applying 12V to them!), but there are also some decoupling
capacitors that _must_ be removed if you use 4164s. If not, you get ome
odd corruption after the screen has scrolled a few times. Don't ask how I
found this out...
VERY good to know... thank you.
I think the heardware manual is on the web somewhere,
so I won't have to
say 'fourth bookshelf, between the CoCo3 service manaul and the HP5245
counter manaul' :-)
LOL... I haven't dug through all the boxes of manuals, newsletters,
etc, yet. When I post the pictures, I'll also post everything else
that came with the machine in case anyone on the list needs copies.
original
manuals, newsletters from a users group and a nice collection
of software... CP/M, Valdocs 2, Valdocs 3, dBase II, PeachText,
I beleive there are offiically different keyboards for CP/M and Valdocs. My QX10 came with CP/M, I have never seen Valdocs. I
seem to recall it
was reported as being somewhat slow, wann't it written in a TIL, not
machine code?
-tony
My understanding is that Valdocs 2 was written in Forth, and Valdocs 3
was written in C. It's also my understanding that Valdocs 3 was
slower than 2. I'm pulling all this out of memory based on reading
articles about the product online, so take it with a grain of salt.
The woman who had this machine used it quite a bit and was just
looking for a home for it. I would have posted something about this
earlier, but (not to make her sound bad) it took MONTHS to get the
machine shipped. She apparently had a bunch of data on diskettes and
wanted to recover what she could. I told her (and had to keep telling
her) "just ship it when you can... I'm not going anywhere and I'm
patient". My girlfriend laughed at that because I'm actually NOT that
patient. :)
But, in the end, she found a home for the machine and I have a new
baby to work with. I love collecting old computers!
Mark
11 Aug
11 Aug
10:36 a.m.
One thing to
be aware of. The video board cna use wither 4116s or 4164s
-- 16 of either, all must be the same type. There are some obvious links
to move if you upgrade the RAM (if you don't shift them, you'll ruin the
4164s by applying 12V to them!), but there are also some decoupling
capacitors that _must_ be removed if you use 4164s. If not, you get ome
odd corruption after the screen has scrolled a few times. Don't ask how I
found this out...
VERY good to know... thank you. My understanding is that Valdocs 2 was written in
Forth, and Valdocs 3
I heard a Threaded Interpretted Language, not spccifically Forth. But I
can;t comment further
-tony
10 Aug
10 Aug
12:40 p.m.
On 8/10/10 2:54 PM, Tony Duell wrote:
My QX10 came with CP/M, I have never seen Valdocs. I
seem to recall it
was reported as being somewhat slow, wann't it written in a TIL, not
machine code?
Early Valdocs implementations were written in Forth, I believe later
implementations were done in C. Not positive about the latter.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
Port Charlotte, FL
1:30 p.m.
On 10 Aug 2010 at 15:40, Dave McGuire wrote:
On 8/10/10 2:54 PM, Tony Duell wrote:
I believe the Forth thing extended to their clone CP/M, called TP/M.
There are some subtle differences between the two. Done by a San
Franscisco outfit, with a name like "Friends-Amis"?
There is (or was) a ton of information out there on the QX-10,
including programmer's guides and technical/repair manuals.
Apologies to Andrew Lynch, but I found the 70-page NEC 7220 manual in
my QX-10 folder. If you're still interested, I can email you a copy.
I'd forgotten that I put it there.
--Chuck
My QX10 came with CP/M, I have never seen
Valdocs. I seem to recall
it was reported as being somewhat slow, wann't it written in a TIL,
not machine code?
Early Valdocs implementations were written in Forth, I believe later
implementations were done in C. Not positive about the latter.
1:36 p.m.
On 8/10/10 4:30 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote:
Apologies to Andrew Lynch, but I found the 70-page NEC
7220 manual in
my QX-10 folder. If you're still interested, I can email you a copy.
I'd forgotten that I put it there.
I'd love a copy; I have a few 7220s here that I'd like to do something
fun with eventually.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
Port Charlotte, FL
11 Aug
11 Aug
12:24 a.m.
Chuck Guzis wrote about the Epson QX10 and Valdocs:
I believe the Forth thing extended to their clone
CP/M, called TP/M.
There are some subtle differences between the two. Done by a San
Franscisco outfit, with a name like "Friends-Amis"?
Not sure about their involvement with the QX10, but they developed the
Matsushita (Panasonic and Quasar) HHC, which was 6502-based. Much of
the software for the HHC was written in SNAP, which was a token-threaded
dialect of Forth. Unless you have the extremely rare SNAP FORTH module,
SNAP is not exposed to the user.
There was also a SNAP BASIC module, which contained a BASIC interpreter
written in SNAP. This is NOT the same as the Microsoft BASIC module,
which was a port of Microsoft's normal 6502 BASIC, very similar to the
KIM-1 version.
12:14 a.m.
Tony Duell wrote:
Nice machine. The QX10 is one of my favourite desktop
CP/M machines. The
video system is based round a 7220, the serial port (IIRC) uses a 7201.
Using a uPD7201 for the serial port is a strike against it. High speed
modems that transport asynchronous data over a synchronous modulation,
such as V.22, V.22bis, V.32, etc., have to use V.14 procedures to handle
cases where the transmitting device is overspeed relative to the
modulation, or the transmitting modem is overspeed relative to the
receiving side. In the former case, up to one out of ten stop bits get
dropped over the modulation, and reinserted on the receiving side. When
that happens, or in the case that the transmitting system's modulation
is faster than the receiving side (due to crystal tolerances, etc.), the
receiving side is allowed to shave off a portion of each stop bit on the
serial interface.
That works fine with 99.9% of UARTs out there, which only require 9/16
of a stop bit for a valid receive character, and to start watching for
the next start bit. The uPD7201 requires a full stop bit, so is not
compliant with the V.14 standard, and will garble data and report
framing errors when V.14 stop bit shortening occurs This was a huge
problem for people using V.22bis or V.32 modems with the AT&T 7300 or
3B1 Unix PC, as they used the 7201.
It's less of a problem since the adoption of V.42 error control, because
when using V.42 there is normally hardware flow control at both ends,
and V.42 can apply "back pressure" across the modem link to slow down a
transmitting system as needed.
Eric
10:57 a.m.
Tony Duell wrote:
It depends on what you wnat to use that serial portr for. IIRC the s7201
has various synchronous modes that can be very useful
Nice machine. The QX10 is one of my favourite
desktop CP/M machines. The
video system is based round a 7220, the serial port (IIRC) uses a 7201.
Using a uPD7201 for the serial port is a strike against it. High speed
modems that transport asynchronous data over a
synchronous modulation,
such as V.22, V.22bis, V.32, etc., have to use V.14 procedures to handle
cases where the transmitting device is overspeed relative to the
modulation, or the transmitting modem is overspeed relative to the
receiving side. In the former case, up to one out of ten stop bits get
dropped over the modulation, and reinserted on the receiving side. When
that happens, or in the case that the transmitting system's modulation
is faster than the receiving side (due to crystal tolerances, etc.), the
receiving side is allowed to shave off a portion of each stop bit on the
serial interface.
Right,,, Now that I did not know. However, I would not think a QX10 was a
natural machine to connect such a modem to,
-tony
29 Aug
29 Aug
3:42 p.m.
Ok, I finally found the time to unbox the QX-10 and check the
hardware. Everything seems to work, and I've posted a few photos
here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=202813&id=734972117&l=6062bd8…
I've still got lots to go through, but so far the software consists of
Valdocs 2, Valdocs 3+, dBase II, CP/M-80, Wordstar, SpellStar,
MailMerge, PeachTree Edit, Peachtree Mailing List, QX-PC (I'm not sure
what this is for), TModem... there's about 10 diskette boxes to go
through.
More to follow as I go through the collection. Oh, there's also a
printer and a modem, which I haven't tested yet.
Mark
On Wed, Aug 11, 2010 at 10:57 AM, Tony Duell <ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote:
Tony Duell wrote:
It depends on what you wnat to use that serial portr for. IIRC the s7201
has various synchronous modes that can be very useful
Nice machine. The QX10 is one of my favourite
desktop CP/M machines. The
video system is based round a 7220, the serial port (IIRC) uses a 7201.
Using a uPD7201 for the serial port is a strike against it. ?High speed modems that transport asynchronous data over a
synchronous modulation,
such as V.22, V.22bis, V.32, etc., have to use V.14 procedures to handle
cases where the transmitting device is overspeed relative to the
modulation, or the transmitting modem is overspeed relative to the
receiving side. ?In the former case, up to one out of ten stop bits get
dropped over the modulation, and reinserted on the receiving side. ?When
that happens, or in the case that the transmitting system's modulation
is faster than the receiving side (due to crystal tolerances, etc.), the
receiving side is allowed to shave off a portion of each stop bit on the
serial interface.
Right,,, Now that I did not know. However, I would not think a QX10 was a
natural machine to connect such a modem to,
-tony
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