12 Jun
1997
12 Jun
'97
2:07 p.m.
On Wed, 11 Jun 1997, Marvin wrote:
> Along the lines of saving stuff, does anyone collect the old printers?
A topic I've given a lot of thought. The original MX-80 and the Paper Tiger
immediately spring to mind as classic printers worthy of incorporating into a
museum but I can't think of much else I'd have to own (aside from maybe an
original laserjet). Given the space limitations that most of us have
collecting printers in the manner that we collect computers is impractical.
But if you are inclined to collect them they are certainly plentiful and
cheap.
Lou
12 Jun
12 Jun
2:10 p.m.
On Thu, 12 Jun 1997 BigLouS(a)aol.com wrote:
A topic I've given a lot of thought. The original
MX-80 and the Paper Tiger
immediately spring to mind as classic printers worthy of incorporating into a
museum but I can't think of much else I'd have to own (aside from maybe an
original laserjet). Given the space limitations that most of us have
collecting printers in the manner that we collect computers is impractical.
Add to that the Gorilla-Banana - 1 pin printing at it's finest! And
probably the dumbest name I've ever seen on a piece of computer
equipment.
Bill
----------------------------------------------------
Bill Whitson - Classic Computers ListOp
bill(a)booster.u.washinton.edu or bcw(a)u.washington.edu
http://weber.u.washington.edu/~bcw
13 Jun
13 Jun
2:12 a.m.
On Thu, 12 Jun 1997, Bill Whitson wrote:
Add to that the Gorilla-Banana - 1 pin printing at
it's finest! And
probably the dumbest name I've ever seen on a piece of computer
equipment.
Ah yes, it bears a remarkable resemblance to my Radio Shack DMP-100.
I know that Axion sold them, can't recall the model number. But this
old DMP-100 is the most appropriate printer I've got for the 4k
non-Extended Color BASIC Color Computer. Wish I had my old MX-80
with the bootleg Graftrax ROM.
--
Ward Griffiths
"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within
the system, but too early to shoot the bastards." --Claire Wolfe
5:29 a.m.
On Fri, 13 Jun 1997, Ward Griffiths and/or Lisa Rogers wrote:
Wish I had my old MX-80 with the bootleg Graftrax ROM.
I'm just curious, but what's special about the MX-80?
I had one for a very long time myself (come to think of it, I don't
actually remember what happened to it...) that I believe was a 'Graftrax
Plus', but I don't have any idea what that was all about. It was my
father's, he bought it for his TRS-80.
Somehow, I ended up with an MX-100 (the wide-carriage version) that I bet
is still lying about at my parents' place, and you all have piqued my
interest.
ok
-r
6:28 a.m.
On Fri, 13 Jun 1997, Ray Stricklin wrote:
On Fri, 13 Jun 1997, Ward Griffiths and/or Lisa Rogers
wrote:
Well, there were a few years where the Epson MX-80 was the standard
printer against which all others were compared. This beast of mine
was one of the early models, from before bit-image graphics became
standard issue -- its base character set included the TRS-80 block
graphics characters, actually. My mother-in-law scored a bootleg
copy of the Graftrax ROM upgrade from a coworker at Hughes Aircraft.
That gave the printer the capability to print bit image graphics as
is taken for granted nowadays.
It was slow. It was noisy. It used only tractor paper. Its near-
letter-quality text wasn't even close. And the bastard ran for
year after year. My ex-wife probably still has it.
--
Ward Griffiths
"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within
the system, but too early to shoot the bastards." --Claire Wolfe
Wish I had my old MX-80 with the bootleg Graftrax
ROM.
I'm just curious, but what's special about the MX-80?
I had one for a very long time myself (come to think of it, I don't
actually remember what happened to it...) that I believe was a 'Graftrax
Plus', but I don't have any idea what that was all about. It was my
father's, he bought it for his TRS-80. 
14 Jun
14 Jun
4:07 a.m.
And the DMP 100 bears a remarkable resemblance to my Radio Shack
TRS-80 Line Printer 7 -- IIRC. I wrote my high school papers on this
with Scripsit until I found a DMP110, which would do true lower case
descenders (not available on the LP7).
-gk
Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 10:12:30 -0400 (EDT)
From: Ward Griffiths and/or Lisa Rogers <gram(a)cnct.com>
Subject: Re: Printers
To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
<classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>
Reply-to: classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu
On Thu, 12 Jun 1997, Bill Whitson wrote:
*****************************************************
Gary S. Katz
626C OEH
University of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
(412) 624-9347 voice
(412) 624-5407 fax
*****************************************************
Add to that the Gorilla-Banana - 1 pin printing
at it's finest! And
probably the dumbest name I've ever seen on a piece of computer
equipment.
Ah yes, it bears a remarkable resemblance to my Radio Shack DMP-100.
I know that Axion sold them, can't recall the model number. But this
old DMP-100 is the most appropriate printer I've got for the 4k
non-Extended Color BASIC Color Computer. Wish I had my old MX-80
with the bootleg Graftrax ROM.
--
Ward Griffiths
"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within
the system, but too early to shoot the bastards." --Claire Wolfe
11:59 a.m.
On Sat, 14 Jun 1997, Gary S. Katz wrote:
And the DMP 100 bears a remarkable resemblance to my
Radio Shack
TRS-80 Line Printer 7 -- IIRC. I wrote my high school papers on this
with Scripsit until I found a DMP110, which would do true lower case
descenders (not available on the LP7).
You're right. And looking in the front room, it's an LP-7 that I've got,
not a DMP-100. Now I have to use self-hypnosis to recall how they
differed besides the mercedes silver to white color change. I do know
they shared the same incredibly annoying noise when they were printing.
--
Ward Griffiths
"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the
system, but too early to shoot the bastards." --Claire Wolfe
2:15 p.m.
On Sat, 14 Jun 1997, Gary S. Katz wrote:
And the DMP 100 bears a remarkable resemblance to my
Radio Shack
TRS-80 Line Printer 7 -- IIRC. I wrote my high school papers on this
with Scripsit until I found a DMP110, which would do true lower case
descenders (not available on the LP7).
I've been meaning to ask this: Why the hell is that program called
"Scripsit"? I can't think of a stupider name.
Sam
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Computer Historian, Programmer, Musician, Philosopher, Athlete, Writer, Jackass
3:27 p.m.
On Sat, 14 Jun 1997, Sam Ismail wrote:
I've been meaning to ask this: Why the hell is
that program called
"Scripsit"? I can't think of a stupider name.
Damfino. It was the official name of every word processing program ever
written in Fort Worth. I started with the cassette version on the Mod 1
with 16k (left 4017 bytes for text once the program was loaded) and never
touched a typewriter after, except to help a friend lift an old Selectric
over the edge of a Dumpster(tm). Scripsit for the Model 2 in my arrogant
opinion was the best writer's word processor ever run on a Z-80. Isaac
Asimov did his last 150-200 books using it -- none of that fancy crap
about proportional print, kerning or multiple fonts -- what a writer
needed was 10-pitch, ragged margins, double-spaced and a clean printout
for the editor which the Daisy Wheel Printer II was far better at than any
of these new-fangled laser things for producing. Scripsit-16 was even
better in some ways, but writers didn't want to learn Xenix. (That
program was unique in that it was the first serious application ported
from Unix to MS-DOS instead of the other way around
like Wordperfect and
Samna). I'll admit for my own _use_ rather than _support,
my favorite was
AllWrite by ProSoft, which I used for years on my old 4p. But Scripsit
was (in _ALL_ of its incarnations -- it was a different product from the
core on the 1/3/4 line, 2/12, 16/6000 Xenix then MS-DOS, and Color
Computer -- same name, different product on four architectures --
SuperScripsit being a very different [and faulty] can of worms) Radio
Shack's only name for its home-brewed word processing programs. The word
itself is a tense of "to write" in Latin. Do a web search (_ANY_ engine
-- I've checked) and most of the hits you'll get on the keyword
"scripsit"
are documents in that language or by SCA members. The rest are mostly
trivia, but one was a good article on classic computers and software by a
New Mexico stringer for the New York Times, URL not presently at hand.
If anybody's got a copy of AllWrite or Scripsit-PC (I want to check them
out with the sundry emulators under Linux -- AllWrite should be fun
running in a TRS-DOS emulator running in an MS-DOS emulator) I'm really
looking for them. My AllWrite disappeared in a move, and I never thought
to acquire Scripsit-PC (I never expected to have a system that was PC
compatible, in honest truth -- but then Linux appeared, with _source
code_). Oh, and if anyone has a copy of "The Source" to LS-DOS that can
be spared (I _knew_ I should have bought it when Roy was closing it out!)
I'm looking for that too.
--
Ward Griffiths
"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within
the system, but too early to shoot the bastards." --Claire Wolfe
6:55 p.m.
New subject: Computer Baseball
I guess thing classifies as an early computer :). I am looking at
"Computer Baseball" "(C) Electronic Data Controls Corporation 1969".
It consists of a wooden playboard about 18" x 24" with a small
playfield, a scoring matrix with 16 light bulbs along the side, and a
bunch of headers along the top (Pitches, Right Field, Center Field, Left
Field, Ground To 1st, Ground To 2nd, Ground To 3rd, Doubel Play, and
steal). There are also five push buttons with a red one labeled "Play"
and the other black ones labeled "Selections". There is also a rotary
switch labeled "Outs". It looks kind of neat and is in pretty good
condition but no docs, box, or infomation with it of any sort. Anyone
remember this thing?
12 Jun
12 Jun
2:40 p.m.
BigLouS(a)aol.com wrote:
Actually, I am not inclined to collect them since they take up a LOT of
room and most are fairly heavy. The count of printers here is unknown
but probably a couple of dozen. The ones I do have are either ones that
*I* consider an important part of computer history or that go with a
system, i.e. the Tandy and CBM printers. Some are becoming a bit more
scarce, and if someone is collecting printers and is looking for
specific printers, they can let us know and we can keep our eyes open.
On Wed, 11 Jun 1997, Marvin wrote:
> Along the lines of saving stuff, does anyone collect the old printers?
A topic I've given a lot of thought. The original MX-80 and the Paper Tiger
immediately spring to mind as classic printers worthy of incorporating into a
museum but I can't think of much else I'd have to own (aside from maybe an
original laserjet). Given the space limitations that most of us have
collecting printers in the manner that we collect computers is impractical.
But if you are inclined to collect them they are certainly plentiful and
cheap.
2:44 p.m.
New subject: PS/2 Computers
If anyone is interested in PS/2 computers, let me know. The Santa
Barbara Amateur Radio Club has a bunch of them and I just found out they
may be going to the scrap yard this Saturday or Sunday. SBARC has a
yearly electronic "junk" sale and they have been collecting stuff for
that event. They also have ATs and XTs but I don't know quite what is
there. I'll be talking to the guy in charge shortly and will find out
if they have other computers that people on this list might be
interested in. I think though, that most will be relatively early (and
valueless now) MS-DOS machines.
10053
days inactive
10056
days old
11 comments
7 participants
participants (7)
-
BigLouS＠aol.com -
bill＠booster.bothell.washington.edu -
dastar＠crl.com -
garykatz＠vms.cis.pitt.edu -
gram＠cnct.com -
kjaeros＠u.washington.edu -
marvin＠rain.org