26 Jan
2008
26 Jan
'08
8:22 p.m.
It isn't difficult. But as anyone who knows, you must collect IMPACT printers!
None of this silly laser stuff, or even worse an ink-spitter (they actually
has ones that did!). Me my collection has a few:
An older wide Decwriter (LA120?)
A narrow DecWriter (LA30) that I modified to do upper and lower case.
A nice Centronics 300 LPM band printer.
A couple of Daisy-Wheel printers. Some actually work. The Qumes; I have a
Sprint3/4 (depending upon the boards) with a keyboard, a Sprint 5 (RO). I also
have a couple of Diablo ones that use the metal wheels.
Then there are the OTHER ones:
A couple of Noisy-90's (Silent 700s) of various types (some portable, some
not).
No to be true printer collector, one must have an impact printer somewhere.
Even a teletype would do in a pinch (somewhere I've got an ASR33 stashed).
On topic stuff: I've got some prints of the Qume printers somewhere if anyone
is interested. They are pretty simple to interface. I used a MC6821 PIA and a
few chips. Pretty easy.
Good luck to all
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26 Jan
26 Jan
9:53 p.m.
Tom Watson wrote:
It isn't difficult. But as anyone who knows, you
must collect IMPACT printers!
None of this silly laser stuff, or even worse an ink-spitter (they actually
has ones that did!). Me my collection has a few:
<snip>
The Tek "ink spitters" of the 80's were built for long
term, high volume
service. The ink carts contained
not milliliters, but ounces of ink. I'd grab one in a second.
Jim Davis.
10:09 p.m.
I'm with you, impact printers!!
I want a Printronix, P300, or P600 and then their later tiny desktop.
There was also a 3 color ribbon and hardware mod for these, TRILOG, that would roll the
paper back thru these for color printing. we had some processor cardsthat went in these
too, for barcode.
A color Versatec electrostatic would be welcome in my house.
The best classic computer stuff, is the $$$$ leading edge graphics from the 80's!!!
I was at Siggraph in 84 I think, at the Houston Astrodome, showing a realtime 3D Rubics
cube solution on a high end Jupiter terminal...
wow. Those were the days.
Randy
Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2008 18:53:44 -0800
From: davis at saw.net
To: General at saw.net
CC:
Subject: Re: On collecting printers...
Tom Watson wrote:
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It isn't difficult. But as anyone who knows,
you must collect IMPACT printers!
None of this silly laser stuff, or even worse an ink-spitter (they actually
has ones that did!). Me my collection has a few:
<snip>
The Tek "ink spitters" of the 80's were built for long
term, high volume
service. The ink carts contained
not milliliters, but ounces of ink. I'd grab one in a second.
Jim Davis. 
10:56 p.m.
On Saturday 26 January 2008 22:09, Randy Dawson wrote:
I'm with you, impact printers!!
I want a Printronix, P300, or P600 and then their later tiny desktop.
There was also a 3 color ribbon and hardware mod for these, TRILOG, that
would roll the paper back thru these for color printing. we had some
processor cardsthat went in these too, for barcode.
A color Versatec electrostatic would be welcome in my house.
The best classic computer stuff, is the $$$$ leading edge graphics from the
80's!!!
I was at Siggraph in 84 I think, at the Houston Astrodome, showing a
realtime 3D Rubics cube solution on a high end Jupiter terminal...
wow. Those were the days.
I don't remember what brand it was now, but back when we had the shop this
guy comes in for a printhead replacement (we had a pretty good supplier back
then), and while I was at it he had me put in this "color kit" for that
particular model, IIRC it was four stripes on that big old ribbon. Some
time later he comes back wanting to know what the warranty was on the new
printhead, I think we were getting kinda close to it. And he brought in a
sample of what he was doing with it, which was detailed graphics output of
some sort. Not that you were gonna get photo quality out of a dot matrix,
but he was gonna get as close as he could. :-)
--
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin
11:22 p.m.
Hi
Does anyone know which Centronix ( sp?) printer the 36 pin connector
for parallel printers became standard?
Dwight
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11:28 p.m.
I think it was the Centronics 770. It had severe problems though,
Centronics had to pull it from the market and thats when Epson jumped
into the market and used the same centronics connector, everyone else
followed along afterwards.
Curt
dwight elvey wrote:
Hi
Does anyone know which Centronix ( sp?) printer the 36 pin connector
for parallel printers became standard?
Dwight
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27 Jan
27 Jan
3:46 p.m.
New subject: LJ4 VFD (was Re: On collecting printers...)
Fellow HP printer collectors and repairers,
I can't seem to find the exact message now, but in the recent thread about
printer collectors, someone mentioned stripping various parts from the LJ4
series, especially the VFD. As it so happens, just today, I did just that
to a printer that was going to the scrap pile (I know where the printer
came from, and it is mechanically worn out - several hundred thousand
pages). I play with LCD and VFD modules for the LCDproc project, and know
all about the "standard" HD44780 chip used to control many, many
character-based modules. We even have a few devices around the shop that
used these standard modules. The LJ4, though, does not. It has a "bare"
VFD, 60 pins for a 1x16 display, then the usual HV PSU components plus
the 8 buttons and 3 LEDs and what looks like a Toshiba MCU, all on the same
board (marked RG5-0841 and S-10437D and 3090741-01).
The only connection to the board is a 10-pin 0.1" connector (like
the ones used by a DEC DLV11J or a PC motherboard for serial), so presumably,
it takes in +5V and has a ground connection, leaving 8 pins for some random,
potentially proprietary scheme for bidirectional communication. I'm sure
I could gain some minor insight to the electrical connection by poring over
detailed-enough schematics (not possible at the moment because we are having
problems with our ground station), but even if it turns out to be some sort
of clock-and-data SPI arrangement, it wouldn't tell me anything about the
software protocol to talk to the printer. I don't have a logic analyzer
on hand, so monitoring the traffic to a live printer isn't going to be
easily done.
For those that have delved deeply into the secrets of HP LaserJet printers,
is there enough documentation out there on how the front panel communicates
with the rest of the printer to not have to discover everything from scratch?
1x16 VFDs are not really that expensive - compared to tens of hours of
investigation, they are really quite cheap. Larger VFDs can be pricey, but
even those can be had for $20 or so, if you check places like BG Micro and
Electronic Goldmine a few times a year.
It would be fun to talk to this printer front-panel, but without a starting
point, I think it would take so much time to figure out that all my other
pending projects will cut in line in front of it for the forseeable future.
So if anyone knows of any suitable documentation, I'd love to hear about it.
-ethan
--
Ethan Dicks, A-333-S Current South Pole Weather at 27-Jan-2008 at 20:20 Z
South Pole Station
PSC 468 Box 400 Temp -33.9 F (-36.6 C) Windchill -54.8 F (-48.2 C)
APO AP 96598 Wind 6.6 kts Grid 78 Barometer 681.8 mb (10560 ft)
Ethan.Dicks at usap.gov http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html
7:56 p.m.
New subject: LJ4 VFD (was Re: On collecting printers...)
On Jan 27, 2008, at 3:46 PM, Ethan Dicks wrote:
I can't seem to find the exact message now, but in
the recent thread
about
printer collectors, someone mentioned stripping various parts from the
LJ4
series, especially the VFD.
That was me. I *love* VFDs for the way they look; I've used them
(mostly the 44780-interface-compatible ones) in many different
projects.
As it so happens, just today, I did just that
to a printer that was going to the scrap pile (I know where the printer
came from, and it is mechanically worn out - several hundred thousand
pages). I play with LCD and VFD modules for the LCDproc project, and
know
all about the "standard" HD44780 chip used to control many, many
character-based modules. We even have a few devices around the shop
that
used these standard modules. The LJ4, though, does not. It has a
"bare"
VFD, 60 pins for a 1x16 display, then the usual HV PSU components plus
the 8 buttons and 3 LEDs and what looks like a Toshiba MCU, all on the
same
board (marked RG5-0841 and S-10437D and 3090741-01).
That's a bummer. :-( Bare VFDs aren't terribly difficult to drive,
but logic-interfaced ones aren't difficult to find.
For those that have delved deeply into the secrets of
HP LaserJet
printers,
is there enough documentation out there on how the front panel
communicates
with the rest of the printer to not have to discover everything from
scratch?
1x16 VFDs are not really that expensive - compared to tens of hours of
investigation, they are really quite cheap. Larger VFDs can be
pricey, but
even those can be had for $20 or so, if you check places like BG Micro
and
Electronic Goldmine a few times a year.
I bought three very, very nice 4x40 displays for about fifty bucks a
couple of months ago; I thought that was a steal.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
Port Charlotte, FL
5997
days inactive
5998
days old
7 comments
8 participants
participants (8)
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curt＠atarimuseum.com -
davis＠saw.net -
dkelvey＠hotmail.com -
ethan.dicks＠usap.gov -
mcguire＠neurotica.com -
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rtellason＠verizon.net -
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