Weird Prices on E-Bay

Does anyone else here have an HP7245? Thia is (I kid you not) a thermal printer/plotter. IT takes special sproketed thermal paper (which is unobtainium nwo, I have a few boxes I use for demonstrations). There's one stepper motor driving a sproketec roller to feed the paper. And anotehr to move the printhead across the paper. The printhead has (IIRC) 13 heater elements on it. 12 are in a diagonal line and are used for printing text (it can print both across and up/down the page, hence the diagonal arangement of the elelemts). In this mode, it prints dot matrix chracters i nthe usual way. teh 13th element is used for plotting. In this mode, the paper and carriage are moved like a pen plotter, the element is turned when the 'pen' should be 'down'. Oh yes, the element temperature is controlled depending on the speed of motion to keep a constant line intensity. It has an HPIB interface and repsonds to 2 consequtive addresses (AFAIK these don't have to only differ in the LSB, they could be addresses 7 an 8, for example). One address is used for printing, you send ASCII text to it and it prints it. THe other is used for plotting, you send HPGL commands there. The control electronics uses an HP 'nanoprocessor' with the normal ROM and RAM. And a lot of TTL for the motor contorl and HPIB interfaces. Oh, and the PSU is one of those that uou hope never to repair, it's a complex switcher spread over about 5 boards. It's certainly a fun device us play with once in a while... I find some of the electromechanical teleprinter terminals (Teleypes, etc) to be fascinating to watch in operation. -tony