Early 360 machines (Was: Front panel switches - what did they do?)

[Paul Koning]

> On May 25, 2016, at 9:16 PM, Paul Berger <phb.hfx at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> ...
> Yeah I watch some of the large system guys disassemble and repair trains and of course when you put them back together you had to make sure the slugs where all in the right order.   We had customers that would buy 3rd party ribbons that where practically dripping with ink that would gum up everything in the machine.

Speaking of ribbons, in college I occasionally used a type of ribbon I've never seen on line printers since: a film ribbon.  Think of the "letter quality" ribbons used on professional typewriters, or daisy wheel printers, a thin plastic film with some carbon-like coating on one side.  Now make one the width of a line printer ribbon.

Our 360/44 normally used a regular cloth ribbon, but a film ribbon could be mounted if desired.  I did so to print my honor's thesis, using the film ribbon and the upper/lower case print train (TN train?) to print the final text (from RUNOFF on our PDP-11 system, which had no line printer).

	paul