SO that is the original DECwriter then. I do not know if anyone on the list has an LA30 (they are pretty rare, apparently), but does anyone need this card cheap? William Donzelli aw288 at osfn.org

That is not the adjective I'd use to describe the LA36 :-) The LA36 has a really nasty bit of design. There's no home switch for the carriage. Instead, it rams the carriage into the end stop and detects that the motor is not turning (no pulses from the position encoder). Fine until the plastic key moulded into the sprocket breaks. The motor keeps on turning with the sproket slipping on the spindle and draws enough current to burn the enamel off the windings. It then goes short-circuit and blows the motor fuse. About 10 years ago, this happend at the place where I was studying. DEC could still supply the motor, but at the ridiculous price of \pounds 130+ (this is a simple permanent-magnet motor). On the ground that research student's time is not worth that much, a friend and I stripped it down and rewound it. It ran find for another 2 years. We finally scrapped that machine. I didn't want it, but I saved most of the useful bits, including all the PCBs, the printhead, etc. I still have that motor with the handwritten label 'rewound by ARD and AMG' somewhere. -tony