14 Mar
2007
14 Mar
'07
3:45 p.m.
On 14 Mar 2007 at 14:09, Brian L. Stuart wrote:
The dedicated WPs that I was getting at were things
like
the Brothers that you could buy at Walmart 15 or 20 years
ago. I'll agree that office systems in general from before
say 1980 are in the realm of interesting. It's the high volume
appliances that briefly supplanted typewriters that come
to mind when I think of dedicated WPs, and I don't see
much in them that's interesting.
Depends on your point of view. The Brother floppies are interesting--
240K single-sided 80 (sometimes 40) track 3.5" SS2D using GCR. The
drives were really gutless wonders. IIRC, many were Z80/64180 based
systems. I've not tried to get CP/M running on one but it might well
be possible.
The Brother systems that use an external CRT have a 9-pin D-sub video
interface that's pin-and signal-compatible with the IBM MDA--so those
monitors can be used on your old PeeCee if you need one.
OTOH, the Smith-Corona stuff was pretty awful. I've got a PWP-7000LT
portable unit. Lots of ROM, but a CPU that's just an 8051-type. The
display's the best part; 16x80 character LCD. The disk drive's one
of those funny 2.8" gizmos that holds about 60K.
Cheers,
Chuck
Cheers,
Chuck