environment. They were built like tanks. The print
head used a patented
"flexhammer" system, instead of pins the dots were made by leaf springs
which had their ends bent over and shaped to a little square point. The
springs were held bent off the paper by solenoids, which de-energised to
print the dots, whereby the spring would shoot forward against the paper
What happened wehen the power went off? Presumably all the springs hit
the paper. Did this mean you could damage the head by moving paper/ribbon
with the ppwer off? And how did the springs get back to the soenoids when
the pwwer was turend on again? (were the solenoids powerful enough to
attract the leaf prings back?)
You would love one, I'm sure I would if I could find one and if I had
Indeed it appears I would...
room for it... Absolutely the nicest printer I have
ever seen.
Hmm.. I think for dot matrix printers that honour has to go to the
Sanders 12/7 (or maybe the 700) machine. This is a 7 pin dont marrix
printer that is so well made that some fonts use 8 passes of the
printhead -- and it is worth doign that. They do things like justifying
text, lining up columns, etc.
The 12/7 uses a Z80 processor with 2 Z80-DMA chips, one ot read in
characters from the host, the other to send them to the printhead
ciruirry. I nthe 700, the DMA chips are effecively each replaced by a Z8.
In both cases there's a correction PROM fro the printhead chracteristics
to correct the pin fire timin, programemd for that particular printhead.
Yes, they're that precise.
The 12/7 is built on Sanders onw mechanism. The fonts are stred in EPROMs
which pluginto ome of the PCBs inside. The 700 is built on a Diablo 630
chass (as I mentioend last night). Fonts come in little plug-in
cartridges (contiaing a pair of EPROMs) which fit int oa row of sockets
in front of the carriage area.
-tony