Memory / Peripherals for Sharp PC-1600?

[Bill (Smithville NJ)]

Glad you were able to get a cable working. When I first played with a PC-1600, I just poked wires in pins 2, 3 & 7 and connected it to the RS-232 cable. Worked fine, but didn't have any handshaking.

In case you haven't run across it, there's a great site on the PC-1600 which has interfacing information:

Welcome to the Sharp PC-1600

There's tons of information there including User's Manual, Technical Reference Manual, Repair Manual and manuals for many other items along with some programs. I think the English User Manual & Technical Reference Manual may be the same ones that I had scanned many years ago from original manuals.

I used to play around a lot with the PC-1600 and did some programming in Z-80 for it. I used a Cross Assembler on the PC - Paragon ASMZ80 Assembler by Micro-Tec Research, Inc. It would create intel z80 listings that I could then upload to the PC-1600. If I remember correctly, I had a Qbasic program called SENDZ80 that ran on the PC and a Basic Program on the PC-1600. The Basic program on the PC-1600 would poke the received data into memory. Since I didn't have any handshaking, I think I just sent some data, and then had the PC-1600 send back the data for checking, etc. Not real fast but it worked.

Several years ago I got rid of my entire PC-1600 collection. And I no longer have the programs that I had created and used.

But you should be able to create something.

Good luck and enjoy the PC-1600. They are great little computers.

73
Bill WD9EQD
Smithville, NJ