6 Feb
2006
6 Feb
'06
10:17 a.m.
On 2/6/2006 at 12:34 PM Roy J. Tellason wrote:
Spinwriter?
This doesn't use a diablo style print wheel, does it?
I dunno from "diablo style", it uses a thingy they called a
"thimble",
which
should give you a rough idea of how it was shaped. Something vaguely like "\_/", I think.
Think of a cup, whose sides have been slit into many 1/8" or so wide
strips. At the end of each strip where the cup rim would be, you find a
character molded into the plastic. Basically a daisywheel where someone
has severely punched in the hub. The hammer strikes from the inside of the
cup.
NEC was about the first on the scene after Diablo and Qume with any sort of
daisywheel-like technoloty. The pritners were definitely lighter-weight
than the corresponding Diablo "built like a brick outhouse" version--and
they seemed more cheaply constructed. No clear benefit to the thimble
technology and a little more difficult to change thimbles.
I don't think daisywheel printers were terribly popular in Japan, due to
the limited character set. On the other hand, the Japanese took dot-matrix
technology and refined it to a fare-thee-well. I recall being very
impressed the first time I saw an Okidata printer with a 22-wire printhead.
At the time, the Oki reps weren't even sure that they were going to market
the printer in the US, because the thought was that no one wanted to pay
for high-quality dot matrix printers with huge character sets. Sanders was
pushing a multipass 9 wire printer for higher quality.
Cheers,
Chuck