23 May
2013
23 May
'13
12:12 p.m.
Hi,
After being kept in a corner, I unearthed my LA180 aka DecWriter I.
After powering it up, no magic smore, but some humming from the fan.
Probably needs a drop of oil. Some of these machines had open-frame fans
with shaded pole motors. The bearings have oilholes. If so, squirt some
light machine oil in there.
The selftest went ok, but the ribben needs
replacement, the characters
were faint.
Now, I want to hook it up, so I opened the backpanel to locate the
serial line, only to find out is is not having the converter board
which is an LAXX-NY for EIA signals according to the user guide.
I don't know if it applies to thsi machine, but some DECwrited have 2
flat, white, 8 pin mate-n-lock conenctors on the logic board. One is a
20mA current lopp with the normal DEC pinout. The other is where the
converter conencts, it's TTL level seiral I/O and power lines. The
converter is quite simplke, jsut a 1488 and 1489 IIRC.
If yours is like this and you cna fidn the conenctions to that conenctor
(or the printset), it would be very easy to make the RS232 converter if
nobody has a spare.
-tony