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Epson PX-8

Disk Drive, Memory Wedge and repairing PX-8.....

Disk Drive, Memory Wedge and repairing PX-8.....

Hi,

I have one working PX-8 and one that is dead. I took the rom chips and battery from the working PX-8 and installed them in the non-working one, made sure all of the switches were in same positions and still no go. Does anyone have any suggestions for other things that cause the laptops to stop working. www.notebooksupplies.com sells replacement motherboards for these - but want to make sure I'm not overlooking the obvious before I spend the $75.00....

Derek Etnyre
detnyre@mac.com
 
http://www.notebooksupplies.com/epson/px8.html

Don't know if you noticed but same place sells the entire thing NEW for $79.00 plus shipping. When I got mine from there, turned on the internal backup power switch and charged it up for a few minutes. Works perfect, those ancient Ni-Cads even hold a charge.

Only thing I don't like about that guy is he takes the User's Manual out of the "New Old Stock" box and resells them for $12.95 or something. I wasn't real happy with that trick.
 
DoctorPepper said:
http://www.notebooksupplies.com/epson/px8.html
Click to expand...

Screw that guy. He's selling a used ("refurbished") HX-20 for $389 and he's got the nerve to list it as a "discount price." On ebay these things go for $50 tops, usually less. He wants $499 for a used one with the tape drive. Geez, I'll sell you one with the tape drive for half that price. :)

His other prices are equally stupid. He probably hangs out with the ebay seller "Computermkt" that we've been laughing about in disbelief over on cctalk.
 
Come on Evan, tell us what you really feel about his prices. ;-)
 
I have to agree about most of the prices, but eighty buck$ for a NOS PX-8 don't sound so bad. I'd prolly buy one for myself, if I wasn't so attached to the ol' beat-up one I have now (we've bonded).

--T
 
yeah - but what you guys don;t realize, is that there are still places that use the HX-20, for example, older cruise ships that have the old Ving punch-card plastic stateroom keys, use an HX-20 to drive the puncher.

I don't know about most businesses, but i don't see cruise lines buying on ebay - that's just not going to happen.
That's just one use - I know there are others, and they are still being used.

That brings up the supply-and-semand thingie....

I, myself, would do what others have said, and hang out on ebay and get one there.


Tony
 
My first PX-8

My first PX-8

I purchased my first PX-8 from notebooksupply - it was worth the extra cash for one that was NIB. The first one I received did not work, and they promptly exchanged it for one that worked. In exchange for sending back the non-working px-8, they sent me some additional books and manual. I think his practice of removing and selling the manuals is crappy, but besides that the deal was decent.

My second, and non-functioning, PX-8 was purchased on ebay as part of a lot that included the modem wedge, thermal printer, dbase and wordstar rom chips.

Does anyone have any use for a non-functioning PX-8? If you pay for shipping or pick it up in person in the Tampa, FL area - you can have it for free. I just can't bring myself to throw it away, but i don't have room for it in my motor home.

Derek
 
There are still a lot of HX-20s (with RealVoice) in use among the hard-of-hearing community. They can be had a lot cheaper than more modern adaptive technology.

--T
 
Oh yeah, for non-functioning PX-8s, try the internal backup battery. If it's incapable of taking a charge, the PX-8 won't start up at all. (I've replaced mine with a 4x AAA-cell pack, populated with NiCads from RadioShack.

--T
 
Non-functioning PX-8

Non-functioning PX-8

I took the rom chips and battery directly from a functional PX-8 and put it in the one that is not working and it still does not work.

When I turn it on the LCD screen turns blue so know it is getting power, it just does not boot up.

If anyone would like the non-working PX-8 for parts or to see if you can get it to work - send me a PM. You can have it for the cost of shipping.

Derek
 
I found a couple of PX-8s at a car boot sale at the weekend (sorta like you call a yard sale in the US but in a farmers field)... anyway... this woman had two Swedish PX-8s (one still in the box with all the manuals & ROMs) so I bought it but I'm having trouble getting the thing started.

I know about the two batteries and on opening the thing the internal pack seemed dead and wouldn't take a charge. I cut it out and gave it a blast on the bench PSU (probably some internally shorted cells) & now it works ok - it holds a charge of 5v. The main battery seems ok too - holds about 5v.

The problem is that most of the time the unit starts and asks if I want to "Reformat the RAM drive A: ? (Y/N)" and then immediately comes up with a "BDOS error writing to disk: File R/O" and then hangs.

With both the battery packs out I ran the machine from a bench PSU set to 4.5v and it said "CHARGE BATTERY" and turned off, so I progressively cranked the PSU to 6.0v and the machine sprang into life and did it's init routine (set time/day, RAM disk size, etc.) and went to the CP/M menu. I ran CONFIG, STAT and BASIC ok. Then I put the (now externally charged) batteries back in (had to solder the internal one back in) and when it starts all I get is the old "BDOS error writing to disk A: File R/O" routine again...

For those who have had to replace the batteries before, is this how the machine generally behaves when the packs are nearly shot?

It looks like a very cool machine and I'd love to show it off if I can get the thing to tick :D

AccordGuy
 
Hmmm....isn;t there a RAM protect switch in that jumper block under one of the covers? I THINK one of the switches it a write-protect...


Tony
 
Playing with it again this evening, I managed to get it to start up again a couple of times by taking the main battery out, turning the backup battery off and doing a few full init resets with the button under the cover and then turning on the power switch with the external PSU at 4.5v.

I then turned the backup battery back on and did the full reset again and it goes into the "CHARGE BATTERY" message. After that I increase the external power to 6v and turn on and this time I get the init routine and CP/M comes up.

If I get that far, I can then put the main battery back in and use the thing on either external 6v or the main battery. It turns off and on ok and the clock / calendar is maintained.

It's very flakey though - crashes all the time when working (took several goes to get BASIC to load and initialise). A soft reset (left side button) brings you back to CP/M menu (usually, but sometimes gets stuck reading the directories).

So far it's worked just long enough between crashes for me to write and run a "hello world" program with 5 loops before it bailed out completely and started the "Reformat drive A: (Y/N)" nonsense again...

It seems happy to sit for ages in idle mode (like on the CP/M menu where all its doing is updating the clock display) but as soon as it has to do some real work it runs a high risk of hanging.

At this rate it's going to just make an interesting desk clock :rolleyes:

AccordGuy
 
The PX-8 is weird in that it runs off the battery, using the power adapter just to charge it up. As you can see, you have to get some initial charge going before the thing even starts acting right. Tony has the 8201a confused with the PX-8. The 8201a does have a memory protect switch on the back. As we all know, NiCads slowly discharge just sitting there unused. I fully charged a PX-8, turned off the backup battery, and put it in the closet awhile. The nicad was close to dead when I just got it out a few ago to look for mem prot sws. Yep, I'm in the "initial..." oops Charge Battery mode myself. The main battery is good until it gets to around 4.8v.
 
Hey look -- a dip switch with a whole bunch of on/off switches inside my PX-8. Gollyyyy, that Tony guy was right about the switches. Now, where did I put my reference book for the PX-8. I fear it's at the bottom of a pile I can see from here.
 
chuckcmagee said:
Hey look -- a dip switch with a whole bunch of on/off switches inside my PX-8. Gollyyyy, that Tony guy was right about the switches. Now, where did I put my reference book for the PX-8. I fear it's at the bottom of a pile I can see from here.
Click to expand...

IIRC, most (if not all) of the switches are just for configuring for different languages.

--T
 
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