ADAM freezes at smartwriter

[nicholasrobin]

hi sir im nicholas. i have a couple quistions about my system. and i have pictures of whats happening but i start it up and it comes to the smartwriter screen right well it only shows the top black bar and the bottom black bar were you type and shows the two green sides left and right. and it wont let me type nothing its like it frezes.


things ive done: reseated the chips
ive cleaned the bottom of boards properly
did a full clean because it was dirty

things that happend after cleaning. i turned it on the smartwriter came up showed the same as before but is showed the yellow box that said "adams electronic computer" and the purple bxes showing to push V,VI,IV for options but still the same happened cant type at all it freezes as soon as you turn it on. then after it being turned off for awhile the yellow and puple boxes went away to the original problem .

things that work: the cartirage works for the caleco games, the data cassetes work like the buck rodger and the smart basic. which ive been trying to learn. the keyboard works the trwo controllers work. the only other thing is my printer the power supply works the sound is perfect the graphics are perfect it just freezses for smartwriter

the printer you know is a daisy wheel one well under the daisy wheel theres a motor that turn the string that moves the wheel for left to right you know you have one probly. but when the printer turned on the head would go all the way to the right and almost hang up and it would make like a duh duhd duh sound like the motor was ahnging up and it wouldent move to the left like normal. my mane concern is getting the smart basic to not freeze so if you knoiw whats going on if you can please help. ive been pulling my hair out. ive read almost all your forums about the adam. so you know what your talking about. like i said i have pics of whats goinh on sorry for the long message im trying not to miss out on any details .thank you.

nicholas

Edited January 3, 2018 by nicholasrobin

[NIAD]

It sounds like the issue is with the Printer circuit board that is inside the printer and mounted to the power supply metal frame (on the right / middle side when you open up the printer and look at it from the front) and this can cause the printer to lose track of where the print head is during startup. What happens with some ADAMs is that the printer controller board goes bad and this stops SmartWriter from completing it's startup and polling of other ADAMnet devices like the keyboard. The computer will work using other software and cartridges as you have found out, but you just can't use SmartWriter.

 

I would open up the printer and clean everything thoroughly with De-Oxit or 90% Isoprophyl Alcohol or a combination of both. Pay close attention to the small metal micro switch on the left side of the track that the print head travels on. Make sure it is not bent, broken off or dirty seeing as this switch helps keep track of where the print head is.

 

You should also try to print something out in SmartBASIC. I seem to recall the command to output to the printer is " PR#1 " without the quotes. Then you can do a " CATALOG " or " LIST " a program to see if the printer is working properly. Then enter " PR#0 " to turn off output to the printer. If the printer works, then the issue is with the SmartWRITER PROM chips on the ADAM Logic Board.

 

If the SmartBASIC test doesn't work, the Printer controller board is most likely shot and you can open up the printer and remove all the connections between the printer and the power supply, therefore making it one helluva large dedicated power supply.... all ADAM operations will work porperly, just without the ability to print.

[nicholasrobin]

when i type the pr#1 in to turn the printer on it freezes the screen in basic

basically with out a working printer the smartwriter will reamain frozen until i fix the printer or get a new one cuz i thoght the rom chip for smart writer was messed up thats why it kept freezing

 

wait when you said to unplug the board from power supply does that mean the smart writer should work then or you have to have the printer for the smart writer/word processor because i unplugged the six connectors from it and the smart writer still freezes

[NIAD]

Yes, open up the printer and completely isolate the powwr supply from the Printer Logic Board. That includes the series of wires ending in large white connectors and i seem to recall two power wires that need to be snipped. Basically as if you were going to remove the power supply from the inside of the printer.

 

This is what I think the problem is, but there is no way to know 100% until you do so.

 

If you want, you can send a PM to Adamcon on here to see if he has some extra SmartWriter PROM chips that you can swap out with the ones in your system before doing the surgical work to the Printer. You need to know if you have the 2 or 3 Prom chip version of SmartWriter that reside in the U## sockets on the Adam Logic Board. One of the chips in that group of four sockets is the Adam Operating System called EOS.

[NIAD]

So with SmartBasic freezing when trying the PR#1 command, that should mean the Printer Logic Board is bad.

 

If you remove the Printer from the equation as I described above, SmartWriter will work properly.... you just can't print anything, of course.

 

Cut those power cables that connect from the Power Supply to the Printer Logic Board. You will end up with one helluva large power supply that looks like a printer and the system, including SmartWriter Word Processor, should be all good... just no ability to print anything.

[NIAD]

The dreaded double post.

Edited January 4, 2018 by NIAD

[nicholasrobin]

no ive already done those things and its still frozen so im thinking its one of the three chips cuz my board has three chips 2 on left and on on the end to the right and the right middle one and or should be for the clock that was optionnal but like i said when i reseated the chips i turned it back on and it showed the smartwriter with the bottom part showing the yellow and purple box but still frozen so i think one of the chips is bad or something so which chip is the smartwriter chip or the eom rom

[jblenkle]

Just a thought...do you by chance have a joystick plugged in? My printer was doing weird things a while back and I unplugged the joystick and it worked fine after that. I think there was a short in the joystick that was screwing the whole system up.

 

Might not be the solution, but you never can tell.

 

no ive already done those things and its still frozen so im thinking its one of the three chips cuz my board has three chips 2 on left and on on the end to the right and the right middle one and or should be for the clock that was optionnal but like i said when i reseated the chips i turned it back on and it showed the smartwriter with the bottom part showing the yellow and purple box but still frozen so i think one of the chips is bad or something so which chip is the smartwriter chip or the eom rom

[NIAD]

Nicolas... in your first post you said the print head moves along the track and continuously knocks on the right side. So you have not ISOLATED the power supply from the rest of the printer and this is why SmartWriter is still hanging up. The Printer Logic Board is still getting power and communication is still trying to be made by the system.

 

Gotta open up the printer completely and cut the 2 or 3 wires that connect the power supply to the Printer Logic Board.

 

If the printer worked properly in SmartBASIC, then I would say the SmartWriter PROMs are the issue, but it doesn't and I personally think your SW PROMs are Ok.

[nicholasrobin]

ok got it i forgotthe manin connector in the back which i guess is the main power your a lifre saver dude thank you i finally have a fully working adam computer. thats with out a printer but i can probly fing another one. but when i had the board out i noticed it was bend and cracked in a place so that was probly the main problem. just one more quistion i checked the chips some say 1983 and 1984. does that mean i have the lastest version of the adam. but the smartwriter works perfect thanks A lot im kinda a perfectionest i have to have something working perfectly of i just worry about fixxing it all the time until its fixed and now its fixed finally

[NIAD]

Those last cables that you cut to isolate the Power Supply from the Printer are for Power (of course) and ADAMnet communication (basically like USB on today's computers). The wire for ADAMnet communication is the really important one to cut seeing that the Printer Logic Board is indeed bad and in these situations, the SmartWriter program will hang waiting for the proper information from the printer... which it will never get.

 

I forget now, was it only 2 wires you had to cut or was there a third, like a Ground wire.

 

The Operating System version you have and all ADAMs were supplied with is EOS rev. 5. You can find out the SmartWriter revision by turning on your system and immediately pressing the CONTROL and R key at the same time. A new SmartKEY will be displayed with the revision number and R80 is the last revision made and most common in ADAMs. If you have R57, R59 or R79 then there will be a lot of issues mainly using SmartWRITER... games and such should be fine.

 

Glad I could help getting you up and running. Too bad replacement Printer Logic Boards are impossible to find now so that you could get the printer functioning 100%.

[nicholasrobin]

there was three 1st was blue wire {E3} on board, 2ND was opened wire no coating so my guess is ground that was {E5} then 3rd was purple wire {{E7} on the board. then the main powere which cosists of red,,orange,yellow and green. in that order. also i have R80 revision. i dont know if you know nmuch about the printer but other htan the crack it had what do you think was responsible i know thats a pretty big guess but do you think i would be able to eathier rebuild the board or just fint what went wrong or try my hardest to find another OR is there a way to hook up an external printer up if possible

[NIAD]

I would guess the Printer Logic Board went bad and someone tried to fix it. In the process, they damaged the board as you descibed. Perhaps it could have been dropped, but then there would have to be some damaged to the outer case.

 

No idea if you could fix it, depends on your skill set and desire.

 

Probably have to try you hardest to find another.

 

You can hook up a Parallel Printer via a Parallel Interface that installs in Slot #2 inside the Memory Console. Back in the day, I preferred the Panasonic KX-P series of dot matrix printers such as the 1080i but you can use any Parallel Printer including Laser Printers with best results achieved if they are Epson FX-80 compatible.

 

Checkout ann.hollowdreams.com for all your Adam needs. They are still making new hardware items including Parallel Interfaces.

[nicholasrobin]

hey what size are the 3 chips if i wanted to flash my own roms would i have to do all three or just one

[NIAD]

SmartWriter is a 24K program as far as I know, so the chips would be 8K in size although Coleco could have use 2 8K and 1 16K chip with half of the 16K chip being empty.

 

Hopefully someone like Geoff sees this thread and can chime in as this is a bit beyond my knowledge.

[nicholasrobin]

ok, thanks for the help i appreciate it !!