As far as I am aware, the LA75 and AppleImagewriter
are almost the same
printer except for firmware. They both use the same ribbons, I'm 100%
sure of that. I seem to recall that they're also similar to another
"generic" printer (C-Itoh or something like that) but I don't remember
what it was.
They're a pretty nice dot matrix printer, and last I checked (a few months
ago) you could still get ribbon's for them from office supply stores (just
get the Apple Imagewriter ribbon).
I've got one attached to the VT420 that I use for a system console on my
PDP-11/73. It's a handy solution that lets me print out from any OS by just
typing it to screen, or get a printout of what's happening on the console.
The VT420 at least allows you to turn the printing on and off in the setup.
They are also good printers to connect directly to most DEC computers.
Zane