21 Dec
2024
21 Dec
'24
1:22 p.m.
On Sat, 2024-12-21 at 11:07 -0600, Jon Elson via cctalk wrote:
On 12/20/24 18:36, Van Snyder via cctalk wrote:
The 1403s at the Computer History Museum definitely have chains, not
trains.
The IBM 1403 printer had interchangeable print
chains. I know of
only
four 1403 printers still working — two at the Computer History
Museum
in Mountain View, CA, one at the IBM Technology Center in
Böblingen,
Germany, and one near Endicott, NY.
All four have the 48-character "A" or "Business" chain, and CHM has
a
16-character numeric chain that allows the printer to run twice as
fast
for numeric-only output. CHM doesn't have an "H" or "Fortran"
chain,
and as far as I know, none of the others do. The difference is that
parentheses are % and "lozenge" — a square with indented edges
— apostrophe is @, and = is # on the "A" chain. IBM also had a 64-
character chain that included box and line drawing graphics. BTW,
nobody seems to know what "lozenge" was meant to represent.
Does anybody know of an existing "H" chain or graphics chain for a
1403?
Van Snyder
My understanding is that the 1403 N1 used a "train" and the
1403 N3 used a chain. I have seen a 1403 N1 train up close,
and there was no chain that connected the type blocks, 2
characters to a block.
Jon