Pocket Computer 4 printer

They live!

So I have 3 Pocket Computer 4 printers.  I smoked one of them a while ago.  So that one is on the "display" unit.

The PC-4 printers were originally powered by NiCd batteries.  After 30 years, they are shot.  This was always one of the issues with the PC-4 printer.  You couldn't charge it and use it.  You could only do 1 at a time.  So once the batteries wore out, the printer was kinda useless.

My solution was sort of against the rules.  I diked the batteries out.  I de-soldered and cut out the wires that led from the AC adapter to the charging circuit.  Then I attached the wires that came from the batteries to the AC adapter port.

This means the the printer is now powered by the external AC adapter.

As expected, the 6V 20mA adapter that originally came with the printer was pretty much useless.  But using a 6V 400mA adapter (that I use with my Model 102) powered the printer just fine.

I performed the same process on the other PC-4 printer and it worked fine too.