IBM Selectric used as printer on Apple ][+

I saw a very cool thing today. I stopped off at a garage sale and found some old computer books (a couple on UCSD Pascal, the p-system, a FORTH book). The old lady tending the cash box said her husband had a big old Apple that they wanted to get rid of. Thinking it just might be a Lisa I followed up on this lead and went and got the old man. He took me to his other house where he had it stored. It turned out it was an Apple ][+, but it did have something cool about it. The old man told me that the ][+ was his son's and he used it when he was at Stanford. Around the time a local bank was selling off a bunch of IBM Selectric typewriters that were being used as computer printers. They had an external box which provided the control mechanism for the computer. The son had a friend who was an electronics wiz and so he built an interface card for the Apple to drive the control box, thereby allowing the Apple to use the Selectric as a printer. Pretty cool. I dug through his manuals and found the schemtic for the adaptor card. I passed on it because I already had enough stuff for the day and the beast isn't going anywhere anytime soon. I'll probably go back for it someday (just the control box, the Selectric and the interface card). Sam Alternate e-mail:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ever onward. September 26 & 27...Vintage Computer Festival 2 See http://www.siconic.com/vcf for details! [Last web page update: 05/11/98]