CE-126P Hardware Info

First a warning:

Manipulating your CE-126P is at your own risk, there is no warranty of any kind.

For some experiments a PC-1401 would be helpful.

Changing the 11 Pin Connection Cable

The cable was available as a spare part from sharp. This is the pin numbering of the 11 pin connector at the left side of your pocket computer:

          +------------- 
          ¦  on 
      1 --¦ +-+ +--------- 
      2 --¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ 
      3 --¦ +-+ ¦ > LPRINT¦ 
      4 --¦ off ¦   _ _ 
      5 --¦     +----------- 
      6 --¦ 
      7 --¦ +---+ +---+ +--- 
      8 --¦ +---+ +---+ +-- 
      9 --¦ +---+ +---+ +- 
     10 --¦ +---+ +---+ 
     11 --¦ +---+ +-- 
          ¦ +---+ 

The pins are assigned to the following wire colours:

To open your CE-126P remove the paper, the transparent cover where the paper is inside and the batteries. Now remove the two visible screws at the backside and the two screws inside the battery case. The two parts of the case may now be taken apart, but be careful, they are connected with some wires. Inside the CE-126P, where the cable is connected it looks like this:

I have labelled the pins on the PCB A to K. The assignment to the wires is shown in the table above. Note that pin order is not the same as on the 11 pin connector on the pocket computer. The shield is connected on a soldering point between two brown ceramic caps (another black wire goes from this soldering point to the second PCB inside the CE-126P).

Adjusting the Thermo Printer Temperature

There is an adjustable resistor (20000 Ohm) on the PCB beside the battery case. With this resistor you can adjust the print quality between light grey to black. Be aware that turning the resistor to strong black may damage the thermo printer or consume your batteries very fast.

Using Accumulators

If you use NiCd accumulators, you may want to load them inside the CE-126P with an DC adaptor. The CE-126P has the ability to do this. Take your CE-126P apart like described above. At the backside of the battery case there are two small plates connected to red wires. If you connect them together, the accumulators will be loaded. Warning: From now on, don't use batteries, they are not built for recharging and may explode.

Extra Characters

There are some extra characters, which are not printable with LPRINT. They have the code 1 - 12, 21 - 31 and 254 - 255. Here is a little program for the PC-1401 which lists all the extra characters: xtrachar.bas

The trick is, that the character code is poked to the standard variable D$ and then lprinted to the CE-126P. Here you can see, what the extra characters look like: xtrachar.tif

Controlling the Remote Relay

If you want to do this with your PC-1401, you first have to know if your computer has the old or the new ROM version. To check this is rather simple: If you have the old ROM, the factorial of a number is calculated with e.g. FAC 3, if you have the new ROM, FACT 3 will work. Here are the call addresses:

Note, that I was only able to check the new call addresses, because my PC-1401 has the new ROM version.

Character Table

Here is a little program for the PC-1401 which prints a character table (Including the extra characters). Again, you have to know if your PC-1401 has the old or the new ROM.

The program contains two short machine language programs and uses the system call CALL &A984 (CALL &A920 for old ROM) which prints a line. Here you can see, what the character table looks like: ctable.tif

Emulating the CE-126P with an Arduino board

Cavefischer has some interesting Arduino based projects for emulation of the CE-126P with an Arduino board (in german).