Morning all.
Just want to pick your collective brains a bit.
I've finally got around to digging out my PCW and assorted bits from where it's been languishing in a couple of cardboard boxes for a year or two, and I've mislaid some of my manuals, in particular ones for a couple of periphials that I have with it.
First one, a Pinboard Datatwin-8 dual 3.5" FDDs. The PCW has a 3" A drive and 3.5" B drive in it anyway, but refuses to boot when the pinboard is not connected. I never remembered this behavious, thought I had knackered it when I first powered it up and tried to boot CP/M...
When connected, all is well. There are some switches around the back where you can switch in/out the 2 external drives as A or B. However, there's a third switch marked Red/Green, and on some of the floppies that I have lurking around, some of them have red or green written upon them. So, what does this actually do? I've tried Googling, and the only things I've found, so far, is vague reference to these external drives also working on a Speccy +3 or 6128 with the vague hint that the top A drive can be either 2x192k or a single 784k whereas B is just 784k so I assume the switch is something to do with that. I'm not sure I ever had the documentation for this device anyway, so just to satisfy my curiosity if anyone knows about it...
Secondly, an SCA RamPac memory upgrade with centronics interface upon it. Again, I can't recall seeing any documentation or disks relating to this device, does it need software for the centronics interface to work or is it transparent, so any info relating to this would be nice. All I can find out about it is by running ramtest on a CP/M disk I have there which checks and verifies a total of a whopping 2048k of RAM when it's connected.
There's a few other bits and bobs there I can't remember seeing, a keymouse and a handheld scanner doobrey, but I'll cross those bridges another time.
Another one, whist I remember, the screen. I'll get a pic tomorrow, but it's slanted to the left along the top inch or 2 of the screen. Any ideas?
It survived an hour of two of me faffing about and playing Hitchhikers guide without any funny smells, bangs or flashes so I assume it generally survived being stuck in a cardboard box in a damp cellar for the best part of 2 years. Sturdy things, these Amstrads...
Cheers folks. You think this was a wordy post. Wait until I dig out my CBM PET & 4040
Just want to pick your collective brains a bit.
I've finally got around to digging out my PCW and assorted bits from where it's been languishing in a couple of cardboard boxes for a year or two, and I've mislaid some of my manuals, in particular ones for a couple of periphials that I have with it.
First one, a Pinboard Datatwin-8 dual 3.5" FDDs. The PCW has a 3" A drive and 3.5" B drive in it anyway, but refuses to boot when the pinboard is not connected. I never remembered this behavious, thought I had knackered it when I first powered it up and tried to boot CP/M...
When connected, all is well. There are some switches around the back where you can switch in/out the 2 external drives as A or B. However, there's a third switch marked Red/Green, and on some of the floppies that I have lurking around, some of them have red or green written upon them. So, what does this actually do? I've tried Googling, and the only things I've found, so far, is vague reference to these external drives also working on a Speccy +3 or 6128 with the vague hint that the top A drive can be either 2x192k or a single 784k whereas B is just 784k so I assume the switch is something to do with that. I'm not sure I ever had the documentation for this device anyway, so just to satisfy my curiosity if anyone knows about it...
Secondly, an SCA RamPac memory upgrade with centronics interface upon it. Again, I can't recall seeing any documentation or disks relating to this device, does it need software for the centronics interface to work or is it transparent, so any info relating to this would be nice. All I can find out about it is by running ramtest on a CP/M disk I have there which checks and verifies a total of a whopping 2048k of RAM when it's connected.
There's a few other bits and bobs there I can't remember seeing, a keymouse and a handheld scanner doobrey, but I'll cross those bridges another time.
Another one, whist I remember, the screen. I'll get a pic tomorrow, but it's slanted to the left along the top inch or 2 of the screen. Any ideas?
It survived an hour of two of me faffing about and playing Hitchhikers guide without any funny smells, bangs or flashes so I assume it generally survived being stuck in a cardboard box in a damp cellar for the best part of 2 years. Sturdy things, these Amstrads...
Cheers folks. You think this was a wordy post. Wait until I dig out my CBM PET & 4040
