Schneider Euro PC

Resources

Wiki
Computer Museum of Humboldt University Berlin
Old Machinery Blog
retropc.ru (pinouts)

Please check out the hard drive HD20 that was designed for the Euro PC machine and the successor machine, Euro PC II.

Documents

Power Supply

The power ratings are compatible with a standard PC ATX power supply. The pinout of the power socket is the following:

And the pinouts of the ATX power supply can be found here. I have not tried the ON pin, but it most probably is connected to the red power button on the back of the computer and can be used to remotely switch on/off the power supply.

Video

Euro PC has a standard CGA output. Only R, G, B, HS, VS and GND pins are used on the DB-9 connector. My Euro PC produced 15.7 kHz horizontal sync and 60 Hz vertical sync signals. You will need a CGA-compatible monitor or a video scaler to display it. I managed to connect a modern VGA monitor through a cheap GBS-8220 video scaler board – it is described in a separate post.

You will not see anything on the screen unless BIOS has one the following options set:

  • Internal video is enabled OR
  • Video Startup is set to Monochrome or Special Adapter

BIOS shortcut is Alt-Control-Esc. To change the Video Startup without an active display, enter BIOS and press down arrow four times and page down to select the next option, then Enter to confirm. Repeat until you activate the display.

Internals

Motherboard

The original on-board battery is likely to leak, so it is a good idea to change it to a brand new one. Without a battery it can be impossible to store any BIOS options and in a consequence to boot from a floppy.

Joystick/mouse add-on card

Floppy disk drive

FDD is Sony MP-11W-58S 720K unit. It has a small variant of the tape connector, so replacement with regular floppy drives is not straightforward.

Reassembly

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