Lots to catch up on here, but here’s one thing that I got fairly recently that I’m pretty pleased about. For some reason the Epson QX-10 seems to have faded into obscurity quite a bit more dramatically than some of the other machines of its time. As I’d mentioned before here a couple of times, I had an Epson QX-10 (not strictly speaking mine, but borrowed from work) in the mid ’80s. Ostensibly, I had it so I could work on dBase II programming at home. But, really what I used it for was modem communication. Most notably, I’d written a BBS system for it, which I still plan to try to resurrect.
I was happy to be able to get my hands on a pretty complete QX-10 system some time ago, but it had no cards in it at all. In particular, it didn’t have a modem card, and though I had searched for it for a while, I had pretty much resolved myself to never being able to put that system I had before back together.
However, my luck changed not too long ago. Someone was selling a couple of old QX-10 items on eBay. Fortunately for me, even though these things are super-rare, nobody really wants them either. It didn’t cost me much. And now I have, once again, a Comrex ComMunicator CR-103.
Of course, at this point, I still don’t have the QX-10 really working entirely, insofar as I only have one working disk drive. But we’re getting there.
Along with the CR-103, I also got an acoustic modem (an Epson CX-20) and a QX-10 RS232 serial card, which could in principle provide me with a second modem to use, although I don’t know if I can find a phone that will fit in the cradle anymore.
I suspect that this will really just be decorative, but it is a nice looking modem.
The RS232 card was even in its original box, pretty much untouched.
The RS232 card also opens the possibility that I might be able to connect with other devices in the outside world, too, I’ll have to think about this more to see if I can do something creative with it.
Though, of course, there is also the possibility that one or more of these things simply don’t work. However I am optimistic, they all look to be in great shape, and as far as I understand it, the previous owner hadn’t even really used them.
The manual that came with the RS232 card is extremely technical, and I have scanned that as well.
Manual scans:
Oooh, I really like the idea of a BBS running on a QX-10, in fact I like the idea of anything running on a QX-10!
The Comrex ComMunicator CR-103 is sweet and I have a soft spot for acoustic couplers, I have the CX-21.
You really lucked out with those expansion cards, they must be few and far between.