31 May
2004
31 May
'04
2:45 p.m.
What is being described is almost surely a Terminet - an ASCII
teleprinter using a continuous rotating band with upright 'fingers'
containing the individual characters - these passed in front of 72
hammers, and behind them were the ribbon and paper respectively. There
were three complete sets of character fingers, thus cutting the 'latency'
of the band in thirds. When the right character arrived at the correct
position on the page, the opposing hammer fired and imprinted it.
The fingers were easily removable allowing for alternate fonts and
character sets.
The two I had were fitted with the dual cassette units (used instead of
paper tape, (but employing very much the same 'algosithm'), and I used
them in the very early 80s with a 300 Baud Novation JCat modem, to access
Compuserve and a couple of other primitive on-line services, as well as
BBSes.
The unit is well worth saving - you don't say where you are, but they
are rare now and I'm sure someone will be very happy to make it go away
for you...
Cheers
John
1 Jun
1 Jun
6:56 a.m.
On Mon, 2004-05-31 at 19:45, John Lawson wrote:
What is being described is almost surely a Terminet
- an ASCII
teleprinter using a continuous rotating band with upright 'fingers'
containing the individual characters - these passed in front of 72
hammers, and behind them were the ribbon and paper respectively. There
were three complete sets of character fingers, thus cutting the 'latency'
of the band in thirds. When the right character arrived at the correct
position on the page, the opposing hammer fired and imprinted it.
The fingers were easily removable allowing for alternate fonts and
character sets.
I had one of those, and loved it! Until it got mechanically flakey and I
tossed it off the balcony (I have photos). Wish I had it now!
Not light. Annoying timing to send chars. Serial I think, don't recall.
Would love to have one again, just for the noise it makes.
(Though nothing beats a Kleinschmidt drum printer for sheer pointless
racket.)
9 a.m.
On Tue, 1 Jun 2004, Tom Jennings wrote:
I had one of those when I was in high school. It was a Terminet 300 and
didn't have any keyboard attached to it. Right after I got it (in trade
for a wrecked R/C helicopter of all things), I loaned it to a friend that
discovered the hard way that Form Feed _really_ meant Feed All 2500 Sheets
of Paper Out of The Box And On To The Floor. He wasn't amused. :)
Worked great connected to my Royal AlphaTronic PC though. Just had to
make sure it sent the right number of linefeeds instead of a formfeed. :)
g.
Would love to have one again, just for the noise it makes.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
whirrziziziziziz BRACKBRACKBRACK - BRACKBRACKBRACK - BRACKBRACKBRACK etc
etc etc...
10:44 a.m.
I had one of those when I was in high school. It was
a Terminet 300 and
didn't have any keyboard attached to it. Right after I got it (in trade
for a wrecked R/C helicopter of all things), I loaned it to a friend that
discovered the hard way that Form Feed _really_ meant Feed All 2500 Sheets
of Paper Out of The Box And On To The Floor. He wasn't amused. :)
There was a little cardboard disk at the rear left side, belt-driven from
the platten. Notches in the edge of the disk (and, IIRC, the belt ratio)
determined the form length. I guess if this was malfunctioning, or the
disk was missing, or... then it would feed the entire box of paper...
-tony
2 Jun
2 Jun
2:04 a.m.
I had one of
those when I was in high school. It was a Terminet 300 and
didn't have any keyboard attached to it. Right after I got it (in trade
for a wrecked R/C helicopter of all things), I loaned it to a friend that
discovered the hard way that Form Feed _really_ meant Feed All 2500 Sheets
of Paper Out of The Box And On To The Floor. He wasn't amused. :)
There was a little cardboard disk at the rear left side, belt-driven from
the platten. Notches in the edge of the disk (and, IIRC, the belt ratio)
determined the form length. I guess if this was malfunctioning, or the
disk was missing, or... then it would feed the entire box of paper...
1 Jun
1 Jun
11:41 a.m.
On Tue, 2004-06-01 at 14:00, Gene Buckle wrote:
I had one of those when I was in high school. It was
a Terminet 300 and
didn't have any keyboard attached to it. Right after I got it (in trade
for a wrecked R/C helicopter of all things), I loaned it to a friend that
discovered the hard way that Form Feed _really_ meant Feed All 2500 Sheets
of Paper Out of The Box And On To The Floor. He wasn't amused. :)
You merely needed to punch a new VFU tape on your paper tape punch....
1:48 p.m.
On Tue, Jun 01, 2004 at 04:41:49PM -0700, Tom Jennings wrote:
On Tue, 2004-06-01 at 14:00, Gene Buckle wrote:
That's like a great "bug" in bisync protocols - you could instruct the
printer to "skip to channel n", meaning do linefeeds until there was a
hole in the nth channel on the VFU tape. By convention, channel 1 was
always punched to the top of form - issuing a "skip to channel 1" was
the HASP/3780 equivalent of an ASCII FF.
The bug is that the communication protocol allows your program to issue
a "skip to channel 0" command to the printer - but there _is_ no channel
zero on a 12-channel paper tape. Newer devices treat channel 0 as if
it were channel 1. Older, especially mechanical devices with real VFU
tapes, empty the box of paper, waiting for a non-existent channel to
respond.
-ethan
--
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South Pole Station
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Ethan.Dicks(a)amanda.spole.gov http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html
I had one of those when I was in high school. It
was a Terminet 300 and
didn't have any keyboard attached to it. Right after I got it (in trade
for a wrecked R/C helicopter of all things), I loaned it to a friend that
discovered the hard way that Form Feed _really_ meant Feed All 2500 Sheets
of Paper Out of The Box And On To The Floor. He wasn't amused. :)
You merely needed to punch a new VFU tape on your paper tape punch....
11:38 a.m.
On Tue, 2004-06-01 at 12:06, John Lawson wrote:
On Tue, 1 Jun 2004, Tom Jennings wrote:
Yes! Very stochastic, since the print band "scrambled" the characters
for letter print frequency or something.
Would love to have one again, just for the noise it makes.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
whirrziziziziziz BRACKBRACKBRACK - BRACKBRACKBRACK - BRACKBRACKBRACK etc
etc etc... 
7:42 a.m.
On Tue, 1 Jun 2004, Tom Jennings wrote:
I had one of those, and loved it! Until it got
mechanically flakey and I
tossed it off the balcony (I have photos). Wish I had it now!
. . .
Would love to have one again, just for the noise it makes.
When running? or when it hit the ground under your balcony?
11:40 a.m.
On Tue, 2004-06-01 at 12:42, Fred Cisin wrote:
On Tue, 1 Jun 2004, Tom Jennings wrote:
When running, it made a mere (thud) on the sidewalk. Damn thing was
HEAVY, it was the easiest way to get it out the building (2nd floor). I
tried my damnedest to get it reliable again, it had timing issues. I
remember terminal strips and fabric wiring. Old!
This was 1984. I should dig out the pictures (on railing, midway, on
sidewalk).
I had one of those, and loved it! Until it got
mechanically flakey and I
tossed it off the balcony (I have photos). Wish I had it now!
. . .
Would love to have one again, just for the noise it makes.
When running? or when it hit the ground under your balcony? 
10:20 a.m.
On Tue, 1 Jun 2004, Tom Jennings wrote:
I had one of those, and loved it! Until it got
mechanically flakey and I
tossed it off the balcony (I have photos). Wish I had it now!
Awesome! Post them please! :)
Not light. Annoying timing to send chars. Serial I
think, don't recall.
Would love to have one again, just for the noise it makes.
Or to have fun throwing it off a balcony again, eh? ;)
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
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ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk -
cisin＠xenosoft.com -
dickset＠amanda.spole.gov -
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