Category MS-DOS

Epson PX-16 Working

Retrocosm Leave a comment

Without too much difficulty I’ve managed to get the PX-16 up and running.  The battery won’t currently hold a charge but thankfully the unit can be used with the AC adapter attached.

On first turning the machine on it would simply beep and display some odd glitches on the screen.  After referring to the manual and simply resetting the DIP switches on the unit to correspond with the display that was attached it booted up.

The unit is currently booting from ROM, it can also be set to boot from floppy but I’ve yet to get the disk unit working, there’s also a 26 pin connector in the disk unit which I assume is some sort of proprietary HDD connection.

I’m having a fair amount of difficulty tracking down much information on the PX-16.  From what I can tell it was mainly used in Europe and often by field service engineers.  Its modular design allows you to swap out the keyboard and screen for alternative versions and like the PX-4 it has a removable cartridge on the right of the machine which can house various peripherals.

Epson PX-16 Throws A Googly

Retrocosm 2 Comments

It’s looking as though this Retrochallenge is going to end up considerably less focused than the last.  Not helped by a late start due to a family holiday I’ve now been thrown a googly by the arrival of a new machine.

For some time I’ve lusted after an Epson PX-16 and with one recently listed on Ebay it was an opportunity not to be missed.  Listed as non-working but including some additional bits such as a spare screen and disk unit I felt confident I’d be able to resurrect it so I put in a bid.  Somewhat amusingly for me, not so much the seller I got it for 99 pence.

It’s in good condition cosmetically and I’ve put it on charge hopeful that I’ll be able to get it working tomorrow.  Information on the PX-16 is pretty scarce, as usual for old Epson stuff the best resource is Fred Kraan’s excellent site.

 

I shall try and find out some more information and take some better pictures in due course.  For now I know this machine runs MS-DOS 3.2 from ROM and has an 8088 compatible V20 processor.  In the picture above the PX-16 is sitting on top of the optional disk unit which can house two floppy drives or a floppy drive and hard disk.