Yesterday I got a nice PCW8256 with keyboard, and the seller said it was working when I bought it, but once it arrived and I tried to turn it on, the only thing I got was a green screen and a humming sound. I have noticed that there is a 24V input on the back, that I do not have the cable for. Is it the reason why the computer is not working, or what could be wrong?
Floppy drive will probably need a new belt and youll need the right boot disk. does the drive led flash slightly?
Sent from my E5823 using Tapatalk
Just to be sure, could you post a picture of the PCW when it's on?
In any case, you need a boot disk and a working disk drive, of course. The Machine has no internal rom and no default programs.
Yes the drive led flash slightly. I only got an original Batman 3" disk, but no system disks. What boot disk(s) should I get for the PCW?
Batman should automatically load if you insert the disk.
If that doesn't happen either the disk is damaged or, most probably, the belt has given up and you'll have to replace it.
So you think the noise is coming from the disk drive? Is it normal for a PCW to have a green screen if no software to boot?
I found this http://www.dataserve-retro.co.uk/contents/en-uk/p1150.html (http://www.dataserve-retro.co.uk/contents/en-uk/p1150.html)
and this :
I guess that is what I should get then?
Quote from: fandenivoldsk on 18:40, 26 August 17
So you think the noise is coming from the disk drive? Is it normal for a PCW to have a green screen if no software to boot?
Yes green screen is exactly what it should do, the pcw has no rom and will show nothing but the green screen when switching on, it has a basic loader that reads the disk to load the software. The drive sounds a little noisy which probably means the belt is gone which is common. Changing the belt is easy but watch you don't loose the write protect pin when freeing the pcb to access the belt.
Thank you for the reply!
swap the drive for a 3.5 disk drive, you can use one of the amstrad 6128 guides is the same.