Epson Apex Product Support Bulletin(s) - Page 21

NUMBER: S-0029C PAGE: 2 of 6 Q. Does the Apex have a serial interface port? A. An optional IBM PC/XT compatible serial board may be installed inside the Apex computer to connect a serial device such as a modem, serial mouse, serial printer or another computer. Many IBM PC/XT compatible serial boards are available through computer dealers. We recommended using a multifunction board in order to optimize the use of available option card slots. Epson offers a multifunction board (Epson Part No. AP-1030A-AA) which has a serial interface port, a game-port interface and a Clock/ Calendar. The board is available from some Apex retailers it can be purchased directly from Epson's Accessories i:rketing at their toll-free telephone # 1-800-873-7766 and orders can be placed using your credit card. Q. Can a hard disk drive be installed? A. Yes, you can either replace the lower floppy disk drive with a half height hard disk drive or install a hard disk card. One nice thing about installing a hard card is that you keep both floppy drives which comes in handy for disk copying. In either case you will lose an option slot because the hard disk drive requires a separate hard disk controller card. We recommend a hard disk which draws 14 watts or less. Another thing which you must consider if you decide on using a hard card is the size (width) of the hard card. Most hard cards take up more than one slot, usually 1-1/2 slots, which means they will fit in one slot if the board next to them is a half length board. The Plus Development hardcards are very thin so they will fit no matter what type of board is in the adjacent slot. A less expensive 1-1/2 slot hard card which we have tested in the Apex is the Standard Brand Flashcard-20. We have heard reports from a few customers who have had difficulty in getting them operating correctly. Since we did not have a problem and we have spoken to other customers who have not had problems, we believe those who did have problems either had defective hard cards or did not have them installed correctly. Some hard disk manufacturers recommend that the computer have at least a 110 watt power supply. This is correct when installing them in an IBM-PC/XT and many compatibles but Epson uses many custom low power LSI chips which leaves plenty of power for added peripherals with its 80 watt power supply. To be on the safe side we recommend using a hard disk which draws less than 12 watts. The Plus Development hard card only requires 8 watts of power. The most commonly used hard drive is the Seagate ST-225, 20MB drive. We recommend using a Western Digital (Model WD1002A-WX1) hard disk controller card as that model has been tested with the Apex. Customers have reported having problems with other cards such as the Western Digital XT-GEN board.