20 Oct
2013
20 Oct
'13
2:44 p.m.
Chuck Guzis wrote:
And there was no greater joy than pulling little bits
and pieces of the page-wide ribbon that had managed
to get itself tangled in the print train.
I did not directly participate in this, but some persons
at my high school figured out how to control the ribbon
advance on the chain printer attached to the hp-3000 at
our school. In addition, they discovered that the hammers
extended past (or maybe right up to) the edges of the
ribbon. They then created a job that printed repeated
full lines of underscores without advancing the ribbon,
resulting in neatly cutting the ribbon. They thought it
was very funny forcing the operator to have to mount a new
ribbon (a messy job). Then they were chewed out because
the ribbons cost a lot, maybe 30 or 40 1977 dollars?
Bill S.