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 Back to HINTS-INDEX