Category Archives: Hardware

System hardware and extensions

The swiss adventure : Lukas ZELLER

Leave a reply

As you understand my research to tell the story of the PC-1500 does not have borders.
I have many things from Germany. And my previous donor, Xavier Fojud brought me a link between France, Germany and Switzerland. In the latter I already had some contacts but the documents he had generously offered allowed me to connect some names.

Last week I received a gift of Lukas ZELLER.
He has been active Swiss side of the PC-1500 with his diary “Tips & Knife” and his assembler ZASM-S.
So here is his generous gift:

Lukas_Zeller

– PC-1500 Expanded to 28KB of RAM + switch to activate a 4Mhz quartz.
– PC-1600 the first version with integrated memory expansion to reach 96Kb.
– CE-150 Printer
– Sharp software modules CE-510A, 502A and 505A
– CE-155 modules whose components were removed to tinker extension of PC-1600
– CE-162E interface
– PC-1500 Technical reference manual
– PC-1600 Service Manual version SME1
– 3 user manuals for software that I’m trying to get.
– 2 prototype cards for male connector.
– ZAMS-S user manual developed by Lukas.

These PC-1500 and PC-1600 contain something not trivial that I will reveal later here in the series of articles on Lukas Zeller.

A huge thank you to Lukas!

DIY : a PC-1500 male connector

Leave a reply

Lot of you are looking for the PC-1500 male connector, isn’t it ?
It’s rare, near impossible to find.
A have a few ones but reserved for my PC-1560 project.

But i can explain you how i did as a workaround in the past…

1 – Find the SCSI 68 male connector
Buy a SCSI 68 cable with male connectors for something like $10.
And take some tools !

DIY_Connector_001 DIY_Connector_002

2 – Cut a connector with a part of the cable attached.
Please look carefully on the picture for the connector and the red wire positions and then at the border of next connector. This will help to make some more.

DIY_Connector_003 DIY_Connector_004

3 – Now we have a nice SCSI68 connector with some centimeters of ribbon attached.

DIY_Connector_005

4 – You have to cut some plastic parts of the connector and some pins.

The PC-1500 connector is 60 pins wide. The SCSI is 68… we have to remove 4 at each end.
With your cutter begin by cutting the plastic at the connector’s border, like marked in red in the scheme. Do it slowly, take time to be precise.

Here is the picture of SCSI68 connector before and after, and the scheme indicating where to cut.

DIY_Connector_006 DIY_Connector_011

Is it ok ?
You have to remove the rect part in the center.
Use the picture to see where to cut, position it with the red wire. It’s important for having good signal names on the wires.
Cut by small parts, begining by a little “V”… and a “U”…

And… cut the 4 pins at both borders.

Are you OK ? Does it looks like mine ? Better ??? 😉

DIY_Connector_007 DIY_Connector_008

5 – Test it on your PC-1500
But please, remove batteries before doing that 😉

DIY_Connector_009

6 – Separate unused wires
As we saw previously, we have 8 unused wires, 4 each border.
Cut it a little bit to separate on one centimeter.
These wires will be useful to be sold on your electronic board and prevent your cable to be accidentally ripped.

DIY_Connector_010

7 – Now you have a really nice PC-1500 male connector and enough cable to cut some other ones.
And here is the wire assignment :

DIY_Connector_012

Do you have comments ?

Your Sharp CE-150 needs repair ?

Leave a reply

The main problem on CE-150 is the battery pack.
This item needs to be kept in charge.
But after years in your attic…

The battery pack leaks and can damage the electronic board.
Sharp did a mistake when designing the CE-150.
Without battery pack the printer is unusable except for tape operations.

Do you want to repair it ?

Look at this video tutorial offered by Kai :
http://www.kaibader.de/sharp-ce-150-printer-pc-1500-vintage-hardware-repair/

And bookmark his very interesting website !

Power adapter replacement for your Sharp PC-1500/CE-150/IWS…

2 Replies

Do you need a power adapter for your PC-1500/CE-150 or IWS adapter ?
The requirements are :
– 9V
– 110v/220V
– plug dimensions 5.5mm x 2.1mm
– Negative inside, positive outside

You can find matching power adapter on eBay for less than $3 shipping included.

PowerAdapter

Use the keywords : DC 9V 1A EU Negative inside

IWS Video adapter for the Sharp PC-1500 (Part 1)

2 Replies

Many of us have dreamed of this device!
But his selling price was 800DM did not make him accessible to all budgets.

It was designed by “Ingenieurbüro Walter Speidel” and sold a few hundred copies. To my knowledge the IWS is the only video interface for Sharp PC-1500.

So the mysterious listing we had:

IWS interface and PC-1500 connected to the TV IWS interface in it's original box

This peripheral offers the following features:
– Playback on TV with the resolution of 25×40 or 25×80 characters.
– Input / Output cassette
– Speaker Output

Opening the IWS video interface box Inputs and outputs of the IWS video interface for the PC-1500

The save/load with the tape are faster than Sharp instructions.

It is accompanied by a user manual in A5 size.
All is correctly described, the new Basic instructions, the memory organization, except the schematics.

IWS user manual
DOWNLOAD the user manual

And there exist a 3 page correction to it :

IWS user manual correction
DOWNLOAD the correction

It can connect directly to the PC-1500 but needs it’s only power adapter.

IWS video interface connected to the Sharp PC-1500 front view IWS video interface connected to the Sharp PC-1500 rear view

And to the printer :

IWS video interface connected to the Sharp CE-150 front view IWS video interface connected to the Sharp Sharp CE-150 rear view

Next time we will talk about hardware considerations…

PC-1600 : industrial housing

Leave a reply

You all know the standard PC-1500/1600 “leather” pouch.
It’s ok for common use.
But it’s unusable in industrial environment !

A company (don’t know which) has developed the perfect housing.
It can protect a PC-1600 and let the keyboard use.

You have two kinds of closing :
– One who definetly close the housing
– One who let access to I/O ports after removing a small trap door.

See the access for the power adapter

This housing is perfect for the PC-1500 too, excepting for the power adapter plug position.

The blue brother : Sharp PC-1500D

Leave a reply

Hello, don’t i promised great news ’till end of the year?
Well, here’s the first news: Blue brother arrived with his printer, in a nice briefcase.

PC-1500D_001

That’s a long time since I was looking for and patience paid off.
Here are some pictures from all angles:

PC-1500D_002

PC-1500D_003

PC-1500D_004

On Japanese sites it has the reference Sharp PC-1500D.
But, to my knowledge, there is nothing to give this name.
Its serial number is very interesting because it puts to the latest PC-1500 manufactured and before the PC-1500A.

PC-1500D_005

Internally it is a version A04 identical to the other PC-1500 A04.

No, the only thing that distinguishes it is blue.
Nay, superb blue !!!

This is the ninth of the family.

TRAMsoft Gmbh, Swiss know-how ! (part 3)

Leave a reply

One of the biggest problems with the pocket computers was the place where to save programs. With the PC-1500 one solution was to get a big memory module like CE-161 or CE-163. The common system was the use of a tape recorder. But this was noisy and slow !

Reto and Thomas decided to design an interface between the PC-1500 and one product currently sold. Their choice was the Commodore floppy 1541. Maybe because it was packed with the power adapter ? And as they had enough space they added a 8bits parallel interface.

You can watch this in their website : TRAMsoft Floppy and // interface
And download the user manual in english : User manual

I have found an article extract from the german magazine Chip :
TRAMsoft_Chip0
Download the full article

Here is a translation :
Continue reading →

TRAMsoft Gmbh, Swiss know-how ! (part 2)

Leave a reply

On the last page of TRAMsoft advert we see “SRS Ing. R.W. Fankhauser” which was one of the best reseller for their modules.
One other was “GEWA COMPUTERS”.
(If some of you have informations about GEWA then please contact me)
Here is an extract from the GEWA catalog 2/84 :
(You can watch the prices on the red page.)

TRAMsoft_Gewa1

Download

TRAMsoht TOOLs were very well known in Germany as showed by the following article :

TRAMsoft_Computer0

Download

Remember that you can have more informations about TOOLS on TRAMsoft website. And you can buy some available extensions too.
Manuals are available for download.

Next time i will show you their storage solution…