2 Nov
2006
2 Nov
'06
4:39 p.m.
On 2 Nov, 2006, at 18:00, cctech-request at classiccmp.org wrote:
I'm going to have to rebuild the platten roller in mine, the rubber has
turned to glue. It's a suprisingly complicated roller (it's in 2 parts,
wit ha differential gear between them), but recoating it should be no
worse han doing any other machine.
I've also had to unblock the toner pump on mine a few times. Doing this
bu the 'suck it and see' method proved that Vesatec toner doesn't taste
pleasent!
The Versatec V80 electrostatic printer is another
odd beast -- it
builds up a charge image on special paper and then flows liquid toner
over it (yes, I have one, and not just beacuae it was one printer
supported on the PERQ).
We used to have a V80 on long term loan from Versatec so we could
develop a 'GreenSheet' interface card for the NuBus slots in the older
Macs along with driver software to drive their wide (up to six foot)
electrostatic and Laser printers. It never gave us any problems, so
few moving parts to give trouble. I wonder, can you still get the bottles of toner or do you mix your own?
Good question. I know that 'white spirit' is a suitable substitute for
the 'clear dispersant' mentioned in the service manual for
cleaning/unblocking it, and that adding a little of said liquid to the
rock-hard bottole of 'toner concnetrate' in my V80 got it useable again,
but I've enver tried to make the toner from scratch. Any ideas if it's
possible, and what to use?
As regards electronics, there are those custom hybrids to drive the
electrodes. But I have a set of boards that were pulled from another V80
with one dead electrode driver. So I've got a fair few spares. I even
have a spare of the HPIB interface ULA (In case you've not seen this, the
standard V80 had a custom parallel port, and I think an RS232 port as
standard). There as a (3rd party?) option which was a PCB that fitted in
place of the connector panel. It pluged into the parallel interface
header on the backplane, and I think took power from the RS232 header.
Said PCB contained 4 chips -- a couple of TTL parts, a stnadard HPIB
talker/listenr chip(I frget the number, something like 91488), and a
custom ULA-like thing. This was standard on ICL-badged V80s that went on
the PERQ, which is what mine is).
-tony