At 09:41 PM 3/29/99 -0800, you wrote: Verily, it is a huge *beast*, and though adorable it should be ignored, IMHO. Unless it is in perfect working condition, you probably will not be able to restore it to working condition, especially if their is any appreciable wear and tear on the print unit or the giant cams that are inside. The 557 was a very unusual machine in the IBM tabulating line. I worked summers at college for IBM field engineering during the 60's and the 557 was notorius for needing constant maintenance. IBM kept incredibly detailed records of every maintenance action on a piece of punched card equipment, since practically all of them were rented at the time. The 557 was the hanger queen of all tab equipment, consistantly the most maintenance intensive of tab card machines. Open the covers and you will see why. There are two giant cams, about 3' across driving the internals. It takes so much mechanical energy to drive the print wheels, that the wheel cage is actually skewed inside the frame, so that if all the print wheels are printing the same character, they don't all fire at once. I have heard of field engineers taking off the covers of a 557 for the first time, thinking that the whole machine was trashed because the print wheel cage was torqued in relation to the machine frame. When the machine runs it feels like a washing machine out of balance and hops around the floor. -- Dean