PC Hoarder Patrol wrote on 2021-10-14, 08:40:Welcome to Vogons :) […]
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Welcome to Vogons 😀
Sorry to report that, like you, I've not had much success with a Google search for this model. I also checked the internet archive on these two Epson sites without any luck -
https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://files.su … ort.epson.com/*
https://web.archive.org/web/2*/http://ftp.epson.com/*
The 1st link has quite a few PDF manuals / docs for old systems, but not yours, and the 2nd link has some old support files (details in attached txt file) which might work on your machine
FILES_LST.txt
I did find mention of a couple of magazine reviews done in 1991 - in the February edition of UK publication called 'Personal Computer World' where the Epson was reviewed against the Dell 333D, and also in the November edition of a Yugoslavian publication called 'PERSONALNI računari', and given the lack of images they even had it on the cover shot!
vintage-tech-magazine-covers-racunari-23-1.jpg
Hi PCHP, thanks for replying and for the warm welcome. I've been lurking for about a year and finally created an account, as it seems like a great community here.
As for the Epson, I don't think these models were released outside Europe and certain locations in Far East. Australian government dept. of Statistics used them back in the day, and I think that's where mine came from. Of course they would have shredded the media. 🙁 Interestingly Epson continued to sell clones in Japan, but Epson.jp also knows nothing about the EL series, only reference other earlier and later 486 models.
Thanks for the listing, but as you suspected, anything Equity or 386SX is too early. I'm still going through to double-check them all, and check out the magazines you linked to, thanks so much!
As for the hardware, I've pulled the ds1287 out and dropped in a socket so I can plug in a 12885+batt in to test some ideas:
1. Clear CMOS (remove batt) and boot, BIOS considered CMOS ram invalid, and so brings up the system with BIOS defaults but of course FDD and Date configs are invalid. System will find all memory without error and POST with a 161 code and any other errors eg: FDD parameters incorrect.
2. Clear (Using this: Re: Cannot enter BIOS setup on my Pentium 60 ) and boot, same as above but CMOS is still invalid.
3. Configure CMOS (Using: Re: Cannot enter BIOS setup on my Pentium 60 ) in GSETUP and boot. Can configure everything fine, checksums calculated and the CMOS bad bit cleared, this gets past the 161 error. Won't see >640k ram and shows a 202 Address error. Obviously GSETUP has no concept of 386 Expanded mem?
4. Configure CMOS in an unrelated 386dx40 clone mobo w/8mb ram, and transplant. The Epson didn't like some bits but mostly worked, however had much the same result as 3. No >640k ram and 202 Address errors.
In most cases I can get the PC to co-operate fine with GSETUP except for expanded memory, which makes sense I guess. In tests 1 & 2 I suspect the BIOS sees the bad CMOS flag (161 err) and populates the memory configuration registers from the BIOS (segment 40?), I can get the POST mem check to count up to 12Mb with SIMMs installed. But I can't configure anything else.
As soon as I configure the CMOS (tests 3 & 4) everything else is fine, but either I see only 640k with no errors (0Mb expanded mem config), or I get 202 address line 0-16 errors for other values. Even this error is obscure, I've found a few sites listing a 202 Address error, but nothing to really explain it.
The system has only one ROM so obv this has both system and video in one, and is a 16bit rom too, just to be annoying, but I am going to try dumping it. (Mitsubishi M5M27C102K-15)
At this point I'm not too confident I'll get this one to co-operate fully, but I haven't given up yet. Thanks once again for your reply. 😀
-4tz.
