VT52s, VT61s lots of DEC and DG keyboards- return trip through Maine, MA, NY, PA, OH, IN to IL

[Ethan Dicks]

On Mon, Oct 12, 2015 at 11:32 PM, Nigel Williams
<nw at retrocomputingtasmania.com> wrote:
> Has anyone ever seen one? I had an idea it used a silvered-paper and
> burned it off? or am I mis-remembering.

I used one in the early 1980s but I never had to repair it.  It was,
as Tony and others have mentioned, electrolytic, not thermal.  I don't
know the details of the process either, but I remember the wet wick
and having to wait for the paper to dry.  It was a PITA, but being
able to do screen shots was amazing.  The only other terminal I worked
with that could do that was a Tektronix storage scope terminal (4010
or 4014, IIRC).  The Tek printer wasn't built-in, but it did take a
scan of the live screen, so that was similar.  The paper was
silver-grey and I remember it coming out wet too.  Everything else I
worked with was either thermal or dot-matrix impact, and could only
capture text as it arrived at the terminal, not a screen image.

-ethan