J.E.Lawrie                                                            HINTS-7.
                                                                         v.2  
 Sooner or Later -

  -  you  are  going  to  have  to  take  off  the rubber "keys" and clean the
  underside of this and the  face  of  the  p.c.membrane  on  which  the  keys
  impinge.   If  you find you can't start up but there is no indication of the
  need for a hard or soft reset then this action is essential  -  there  is  a
  partial short-circuit between strips on the membrane.  You can test for this
  condition now by pressing down any key and then both SHIFT keys -  it  won't
  fire up!

  You  can get the rubber off and clean it, being careful not to break off the
  three rubber "pegs" holding it close  to  the  membrane.   This  also  needs
  cleaning.   DON'T  USE  A  SOLVENT - YOU WILL RUIN IT !!  Get some Isopropyl
  alcohol at the chemists - 25 cc will last a long time, even  when  you  also
  use it for your tape-heads.  Use a lint-free cloth or soft paper, of course.

  You don't have to take all of the screws out of the back to do this cleaning
  - only the bottom five (two of which are under  the  bottom  feet)  and  the
  two  just above these five, one of which is under the serial number "plate".
  Don't lose any of the screws; the are not easy to replace and you  MUST  NOT
  use any which are the slightest bit longer!

Contacts

  Another possible cause of problems is poor contact between battery cells and
  the  springs they press on.  Before putting in new batteries give them a rub
  at both ends with some sandpaper.

"Blank-sheet printing"

  If you have a line showing below the last "page break" the  Z88  thinks  you
  have  another  page  written  so on it goes and you get a blank page.  Don't
  leave even an empty line there, in fact, make it a line short of a full page
  when you get to the last page of text.

  Now  you  know  that the PrinterEd, on the second page, has a prompt "End of
  page" and the default figure  for  this  is  12.   This  makes  the  printer
  line-feed  to  the  end-of-page.   If you change this to 10 (don't forget to
  type  <>FU after that or it won't "stick") then the printer will stop at the
  end of the text.

  I  leave  mine on 10 so as not to waste time and paper when the text is less
  than a full page, changing to 12 when I have several sheets of text to print

  If there are only two or three pages I say Yes to "wait between pages" after
  <>PO so that it prints to the bottom of the first page and waits  for  ENTER
  before going on to subsequent pages.

Emptying the keyboard

  When using a Basic program it is very easy to let the finger dwell too  long
  on  the  key  which  moves  the  program  on after a pause.  This causes the
  program, perhaps, to run through a number of prompts. You could  reduce  the
  "auto repeat rate" in the Panel but an easier way is to include this line in
  the program, immediately after the line at which the program paused -  L.No.
  REPEAT UNTIL INKEY(0)= -1         which tells the program to "go on reducing
  the keyboard buffer until it is empty".                                END

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