cctalk Digest, Vol 30, Issue 39

DEC, --------------------------- Ah yes, that would be the Letterprinter 100 and the Letterwriter 100 respectively; I have a few of those myself awaiting a trip to the dumpster, as well as some parts & ribbons. Tony, I naturally assume you have the documentation set? That reminds me of a little story: when we converted our clients from Cromemco systems to PCs, we needed to convert the LA100s from Xon/Xoff to hardware handshaking. After several days of asking techs at DEC Canada and their reps and just getting unhelpful "can't be done" or "yeah, I think there's a jumper somewhere (but no one knew where)" replies, I finally called DEC US; when I asked the receptionist (those were the days!) for the tech department, she asked me what it was about. Figuring I was about to waste more time explaining the problem to someone who wasn't going to be any help, I nearly fell off my chair when she replied, "no problem, just run a jumper from pin 11 of IC27 to the pad beside pin such-and-such of IC so-and-so (the actual details are buried in my notes somewhere)". After I confessed and apologized for my sexist expectations and told her that she was probably the only person in North America who knew that, she laughed and admitted that a savvy engineer had happened to be standing beside her and overheard what she'd repeated. BTW, Tony, for someone as meticulous as you about some things, I'm surprised to see so many typos in your messages lately; is this a hardware or mushware problem, or none of my business? mike