Amstrad PenPad PDA600 Troubleshooting Guide
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Most faults on the Amstrad PenPad PDA600 come from its power supply, its pen digitiser and handwriting recognition, or its memory cards. Amstrad's French manual has a troubleshooting table and a list of on-screen messages; for anything beyond them it refers the owner to the dealer.[1] Routine care, including the lithium cell and pen calibration, is in the Amstrad PenPad PDA600 Maintenance Guide.
Power and memory
[edit | edit source]| Symptom | Probable cause | Action |
|---|---|---|
| No response to the stylus | Software hang | Switch off, wait a few seconds and switch on again. |
| Screen blank or unreadable at switch-on | Contrast setting; cells fitted wrongly | Adjust the contrast icon at the top left. Check the AA cells are the right way round. If the screen is still blank, Amstrad's manual refers you to the dealer. |
| Battery menu opens by itself | Gauge at REMPLACER! | Switch off and change the AA cells as soon as possible. |
| Lithium cell warning | CR2032 backup cell low | With good AA cells fitted, switch off and replace the CR2032. |
| Memory lost after changing cells | Cells removed with the power on, or AA and lithium cells removed together, or a flat backup cell | Amstrad warns that either of the first two can lose all data. Data cannot be copied back from a card, but a card of 256 KB or more can be used in place of the internal memory; otherwise re-enter from a printout. |
After switching off, wait a few seconds before switching on again.[1] The PenPad turns itself off after five minutes without use, which is not a fault.[1][2] Corroded battery contacts from leaking cells are covered in Battery Explosion, Capacitor or Corrosion Damage.
Display
[edit | edit source]- Faint or dark screen: touch the dark or light half of the contrast icon at the top left and hold it, pressing lightly, until the contrast is right.[1]
- Hard to read in dim light: Byte found the contrast poor in dim lighting, made worse by the thick and highly reflective digitiser film over the LCD. This is how the PenPad was built.[2]
- A single dot left on a diary page shows as a drawing in the weekly view. Rub it out with the eraser icon, or delete the whole page by touching a binder ring and dragging the page off the screen.[1]
Pen and handwriting recognition
[edit | edit source]| Symptom | Probable cause | Action |
|---|---|---|
| Line drawn does not appear under the stylus tip | Pen calibration has drifted | Recalibrate the pen from the configuration menu: hold the PenPad normally and press each target gently until it beeps. |
| A letter, such as T, is still misread after training | The stroke starts outside its box, or calibration is off | Recalibrate the pen, then try again. |
| Recognition poor overall | Character library trained badly or by another user | Rewrite the whole character library from the configuration menu. Stored text is not affected. |
| Address book out of alphabetical order; search finds unrelated words | The PenPad stores 0 and O, and 1 and I, as the same character, so a name may have been stored as starting with a digit | Retrain those characters so they differ: a slashed zero, and an I with serifs or a dot. |
| Message saying a name begins with a digit | First letter recognised as a number | Rewrite the first character. |
| Beep when entering a regular event | No box ticked to say when it repeats | Tick the repeat box. |
Recognition works only on single characters written in boxes, not on joined writing, and improves as misread characters are retrained.[2] The trained library cannot be saved outside the PenPad, so a reset or memory loss means training it again.[2]
Memory cards and messages
[edit | edit source]| Message | Meaning | Action |
|---|---|---|
| CARTE? | The card icon was touched with no card in the slot | Touch the screen to clear the message. |
| CHANGEE | A card was inserted without switching off | Switch off, wait a few seconds and switch on. |
| ECHEC | The PenPad could not read the card | Touching the screen while the message shows overwrites the card and destroys its data. A defective card cannot be used. |
| PROTEGEE | The PCMCIA card is write-protected | Remove the card's write protection, following the card maker's instructions. |
| MEMOIRE SATUREE | Memory full | Delete entries you no longer need, starting with handwritten notes, which use the most memory; or add a card. |
| Copy warning | Copying the internal memory to a card that already holds data | Continuing erases the card's contents. |
| Clash warning | Two appointments at the same time on the same day | Change one of them. |
Cards from 32 KB to 2 MB work; larger cards do not. A card used in another computer is formatted, and a card from an Amstrad NC100 Notepad brings up a warning before its data is overwritten.[1] A card holds its data with its own battery, shown as BON or REMPLACER! in the desk menu; a card whose battery has failed loses its contents.[1]
Notes section and to-do list
[edit | edit source]- The notes section seems to have disappeared and there are no pages left: insert new pages with the new-page icon.[1]
- The to-do list is full: add a new item with the new-page icon.[1]
Printing and PC link
[edit | edit source]The PenPad prints and transfers through its serial connector at fixed settings of 9600 baud, 8 data bits, no parity and 1 stop bit, which cannot be changed on the PenPad; set the printer to match. A parallel printer needs a serial-to-parallel converter.[1] The connector pinout and the null-modem wiring are on the Amstrad PenPad PDA600 page.
Related pages
[edit | edit source]- Amstrad PenPad PDA600 · Amstrad PenPad PDA600 Maintenance Guide · Amstrad PenPad PDA600 Capacitor Replacement Guide
- Amstrad PenPad PDA600 User Manual (French)
References
[edit | edit source]- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 Amstrad, PenPad PDA 600 user manual (French, 1993). Hosted as File:Amstrad PenPad PDA600 User Manual (French).pdf, described at Amstrad PenPad PDA600 User Manual (French). Replacing the cells p. 6; switching on and contrast pp. 7–8; first-time set-up p. 9; gauges and memory p. 33; memory cards pp. 34–35; input and output p. 36; configuration p. 40; troubleshooting table pp. 41–42; messages pp. 43–44; memory cards appendix pp. 45–46.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Dick Pountain, "Amstrad's Modest PDA", Byte, August 1993, pp. 161–162, 164. Scan at archive.org. Retrieved 2026-10-02. The power-saving time-out that cannot be disabled, poor display contrast in dim light under the reflective digitiser film, pen calibration at first switch-on, and the boxed character recognizer and its retraining.