Teletype Tales Part 1

_Teletype_Tales_ Warning, this is rather long and in three parts. If you are not interested in TTYs, just skip this and the next two emails. Part 1 - Ancient History My very first interaction with a computer, in 1976, was via an ASR33 teletype. I continued to frequently use ASR33s for the next several years. A good friend of mine actually owned one. Consequently, I have a definite nostalgia for them and wanted to add one to my collection for a long time. I finally acquired one in December of 2001. Actually, I got two model 33 teletypes, an ASR and a KSR. They came from a HAM radio operator. The ASR is on a floor stand and the KSR is a tabletop unit. The ASR had been well used. It was dirty, inside and out, full of dog hair, bug bits and even some broken light bulb glass. There was "goop" all over that I took to be coagulated lubricant but it turned out to be degraded foam rubber (but that part of the story comes later). The cover was yellowed with some cracks here and there. The KSR wasn't much better even though it had been stored in a box. As a matter of fact, it was worse because it had been moved around in the box but the shipping screws were not in place. This allowed the typing unit which is "free floating" to shift around and smash the plastic cover to bits. When I got them home, I immediately put the KSR away for "another day" under the assumption that it was badly damaged. I tried to carefully clean as much of the crud out of the ASR as I could without actually taking anything apart other than taking the cover off. I should point out here that, while I'm not bothered by the complexity of electronic circuits, I find mechanical complexity (lots of levers, gears, cogs and the like) a bit intimidating. After the cleaning, I hand turned the motor a few revolutions. It turned freely, so I went ahead and plugged it in and switched it on to local. The motor hummed nicely, there was no grinding or other bad noises. The hammer pad had been replaced with a plastic faucet washer, held in place with shrink tube. It seemed secure, so I slid some paper in and pressed a few keys. It was clearly trying to do something but it was definitely not right. The hammer was striking the type cylinder but the carriage was not moving. Moving the paper around, you could see that sometimes the struck character corresponded to the pressed key, sometimes not. I asked for help on both cctalk and greenkeys (I really wanted to try to get someone to come "on site" and work on it with me) but didn't get anything very useful. Sadly, I put the ASR away for "another day". End of part 1.