for aprticualr ICs which then go to collectors
who never power them up...
They were a dot matrix, very fast and had a pneumatic
bladder under
the head to lean it forward to the platten.
Zinc diecast case I think
iirc one 4040 did machine control the other was input buffer/character
set to pin pattern
I suddently want one of these :-) I can't see it would be worth shipping,
so I am unlikely to get one, but it sure sounds fun....
For a diffrent reason I'd like to find an HP9871 daisywheel printer. This
thing has 2 motors fixed to the chassis. If they rotat the same way, the
carriage moves. If they rotate in opposite directions the daiwywheel
spins. Soo odd. I want to pull the case on one.
Several more recent printers had multiple 8-bit microprocessors. The
Sands 700 (and I assume 900) machines have a z80 for processing the
commands, handling the font ROMs, etc a Z8 to handle the input data nd
another Z8 to drive the printhead. An odd machine, it's a multi-pass dot
matrix built on the mechansim of a Diablo 630 daiyswheel with a 7 (or 9)
pin printhead in plase of the daisyweel and its motor.
The DEC LA324 has 3 processors too, I think. I seem to rememebr all of
the 7031/8051 flavour, but I may ne misrememebring. It's been a long time
since I've been inside one of those.
-tony
