One of the most apparent features of the PX-4 was the cartridge bay. Apart from developing several cartridges themselves, Epson also provided full documentation on the cartridge interface, so third parties could make cartridges too. Below is an overview of the cartridges developed by Epson.
| ROM H403A |
| The ROM cartridge is fully supported by the PX-4 OS and maps the ROMs default as J: and K:. The ROM types supported are the same as for the internal ROM drives (B: and C:), 8kByte, 16kByte and 32kByte. |
| RAM |
| The RAM cartridge is fully supported by the PX-4 OS and maps the RAM as disk I:. The standard Epson RAM cartridge contains only 16 kByte, but 32 kByte and 64 kByte are supported too. The third party cartridge shown here contains 128 kByte and probably needs a user-BIOS driver to work properly. Without driver, it is 32kByte in size. |
| Microcassette H404A |
| The microcassette drive is fully supported by the PX-4 OS and maps to drive H:. |
| Printer H409A |
| The Cartridge Printer is fully supported by the PX-4 OS. The width is 60 dots or 40 characters. A character is printed as 6 x 8 dots. |
| Modem |
| The modem cartridge is not supported by the PX-4 OS, so needs
special software to function. It can dial and auto anwser and communicate
up to 300 bps (Bell 103). The internal PX-4 RS-232 port is used for data
transfer. In the Operating System Reference Manual is a Modem Sample Program that demonstrates the cartridge. As I have no modem cartridge, I cannot test this. |
| Digital Multimeter Cartridge H407A |
| The DMM cartridge is not supported by the PX-4 OS, but needs special
software to function. The ranges are:
|
| PROM WRITER H413A |
| The PROM Writer cartridge is not supported by the PX-4 OS, but needs special software. An example is the ROMWRITE capsule ROM. A description of the software is available. The PROM Writer supports 2764, 27128 and 27256 type EPROMs. |
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Latest update: 2010-04-16