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Vintage Printers Anyone?

I was given a Bryans analog plotter at a MARCH party a few months back. I am yet to test it though. My favorite printers are of the terminal printers, like the Decwriter II.
Bill
 
I don't collect printers, but when they are offered for free, they work and are old, I take a few. I have several daisy wheel printers and several early IBM's too. A few okidata's as well and some are boxed. I have several Epson DFX 5000's and also an assortment of printing ribbons, etc.

All are for sale if anyone is interested.
 
..serious?.. I'd be surprised you knew the first two without the last. LOL is Laughing Out Loud. This accronym list was more difficult to find than one would expect. Of course I had to find one from BBS days since I couldn't possibly give credit to Instant Messaging or SMS.
 
I don't collect printers but I did manage to hang on to my old DMP-130. I bought it in 1986 or so and it still works. I have the Radio Shack PC parallel adapter cable, so it will work with just about any setup that you have. In the PC mode it emulates an IBM Proprinter. It doesn't support the IBM extended characters 129 through 256 however, only ASCII characters 1 through 128 - all you need to do a nice letter. Not bad with graphics either.
 
I've never had much luck getting other people interested in old printers. I had a Diablo 1610 here that I tried to give away for a year before Lorne finally took it.

My favorite personal printer was the Teletype model 40 in an acoustic cabinet. Nice fast chain printer that would fit on a tabletop.
 
Well Chuck, I would have taken your Diablo 1610 but what would something like that have cost to ship? I think that is part of the problem with printers - particularly daisys.

My absolute favourite in printers is indeed daisy wheel, but particularly the Qume. That was my first printer and it too was massive. It's unfortunate that the few daisy wheel printers that I've had are long gone and so are any replacements. I think it is unlikely that I will ever be able to get another one at this point in time. (sigh)
 
Ole, I think there still are plenty of daisy-wheel typewriters; many of which can be adapted to printing. think there are still some daisywheels out there if you look. Banks like multipart forms and a daisywheel or a dot matrix are the only two choices.

I still haven't junked the Commodore MPS-801. I keep hoping that someone wants it.
 
C
Chuck(G)
Ole, I think there still are plenty of daisy-wheel typewriters; many of which can be adapted to printing. think there are still some daisywheels out there if you look. Banks like multipart forms and a daisywheel or a dot matrix are the only two choices.
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Thanks for the idea. :) My problem is that I now live in the sticks and acquisition would likely involve shipping. However, your encouragement gives me some hope. I should actually put out the word to some folks in Vancouver where it might be possible to find one and convince someone to come visit by car. (with a load of stuff for me - hehe) My other problem is that I'm cheap - and poor. I just spent all my money on a potentially life saving 5KW emergency generator so I can pump water and make coffee or put out a fire when the power goes down. This is going to be a really dry year, so fire safety might trump printers. :) ... unless I could actually find a Qume.
 
I have a handful of interesting old printers. My "daily driver" is a 10+ year old HP DeskJet 870Cse, which is almost identical to the 850 series. It holds a nice, big, easily-refillable black cartridge, and drivers are bundled with every major operating system so I never have to hunt for disks. Newer printers come with an entire CD-ROM full of software, and they typically install so much extra junk like shovelware and unnecessary system services that I won't let them near my system.

I've also got a DeskJet 1200C, which was at the high-end of HP's inkjet lineup back in the mid-90's. It's quite a bit bigger than the 870, and has room for memory expansion & JetDirect networking. Each color (CMYK) is stored in a separate ink cartridge (nice because yellow tends to run out first), and there's even a heater element just beneath the printing area to dry the ink. It works great, but unfortunately at 300DPI its color quality is insufficient for anything more than business graphics.

And rounding out the HP obsession, I've got a LaserJet 4+ with PostScript module and JetDirect installed. It makes a great networked laser printer, though it needs a good cleaning as pages come out with a lot of extra toner on them. Hopefully it's just a lousy toner cartridge, which has been remanufactured. I've got two brand-new original HP toner cartridges, but I'd like to exhaust the existing toner first.
 
ajerimez said:
I've got a LaserJet 4+ with PostScript module and JetDirect installed. It makes a great networked laser printer, though it needs a good cleaning as pages come out with a lot of extra toner on them. Hopefully it's just a lousy toner cartridge, which has been remanufactured. I've got two brand-new original HP toner cartridges, but I'd like to exhaust the existing toner first.
Click to expand...

I've had HP LaserJet printers for personal use ever since the late 80's. It has been my experience that the drum inside the toner cartridge will go bad about 2 years after it's been installed. When it goes bad you get dark streaks and bands on the printed page. I don't think I've ever ran out of toner before the drum went bad.
Be forewarned that the LaserJet 4 has a reputation for paper jam problems. According to this WIKI entry, the problem is resolved by replacing some rollers in the exit paper path.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_LaserJet_4

IMO, a LaserJet is much more economical and reliable than an InkJet.
 
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Chuckster_in_Jax said:
IMO, a LaserJet is much more economical and reliable than an InkJet.
Click to expand...

So true. I hate inkjet printers like the plague. They're unreliable, high maintenance, and the ink cartridges are expensive and dry up if you don't use them regularly. Matrix printers a dime and a dozen, and they have the worst quality of all the typical printer technologies, especially the ones with less than 24 pins. But at least even matrix printers are more reliable than inkjets.

Laser printers are such a blessing in comparison. High quality, reliable (even if you haven't used them for a while), and economical. Especially if you're lucky to get your hands on one of those corporate models that take regular toner. One of the best bargain deals I ever found was a Kyocera FS-3800 1200dpi laser printer with integrated ethernet print server, 60% remaining toner, for €30. It worked with generic PostScript drivers in a LAN and it took regular toner. No proprietary cartridges or anything. They were piled up on a pallet, most likely salvaged from some company that must have moved or gone out of business. You never know what you're getting, but we took the risk and bought one, and man, was it one of the best deals we ever had.

Anyway, I digress, since those are obviously not vintage. ;) In my opinion, the only vintage printers that are interesting are indeed the daisy wheel printers, which were already mentioned by others here. Simple, reliable, and high letter quality, even though they're obviously text only (although it would be interesting to try printing some nice ASCII art with them :mrgreen:). By the way, is it just me, or are daisy wheels quite uncommon these days? That would be another reason why they might be more interesting to collectors. Personally, I don't think I've ever encountered a daisy wheel printer, which makes them even more interesting to me.
 
I've got a networked LaserJet 4 as well -- picked it up for $2.50 at the surplus auction for the purpose of making toner-transfer DIY PCBs. It works great for that, but I've also completely switched to it for all of my printing needs. Haven't bought an inkjet cartridge in years!

Other than that, I've got my grandfather's Panasonic 24-pin dot matrix printer, which I still use for printing tractor feed labels, and for printing invoices for my small electronics components business. I've also got an ImageWriter II that came with a Macintosh Classic...it still works, but needs some glue as it got dropped and one of the legs separated from the case. Also picked up one of the Kaypro-branded Juki daisy wheel printers that originally came with the Kaypro II -- I haven't gotten a chance to test it yet, but I'll probably end up using it for typewritten letters once I get it working. I still prefer the look of impact printing even over good laser printing. There are no belts or pulleys in the Kaypro printer, only a flat bar that the carriage rides on...I'd originally thought there was a motor with pinch rollers inside the carriage, but someone mentioned having a printer with a linear motor, which is perhaps what it is.
 
I hung onto a Panasonic KX-P4455 laser printer--a beast of a machine that deposits an extra-heavy layer of toner (useful for DIY transfer PCBs). It's the third big Panasonic I've owned (the others were the KX-P4450 and 4451). Now I use a couple of inexpensive Brother lasers at a couple of machines for light work and a Xerox Docuprint to handle volume and oversize (it'll handle 11x17" stock and duplex it).

I've never owned an inkjet, nor have ever wanted to.

Some of the high-end multipass dot-matrix printers for NLQ work could deliver some amazing quality.
 
Chuckster_in_Jax said:
Be forewarned that the LaserJet 4 has a reputation for paper jam problems. According to this WIKI entry, the problem is resolved by replacing some rollers in the exit paper path.
Click to expand...

My LJ4 actually did have this problem when I first bought it from a thrift store in Los Angeles several years ago. I replaced the exit rollers and the paper path now works great. Thanks for your suggestion re: the toner problem, I'll try a new cartridge.
 
I had to replace a couple rollers and get a new toner cart for my LJ 4si when I got it a few years ago, works great now. The rollers tend to get dried up with use, so they cannot pick up anything. The toner I got was refilled a few times and had streaks, the new one prints perfect ($11 or so on ebay shipped).
 
I have several ones. Olivetti DM 99, 100, 105, 250+ASF, 309, 324, JP 350 and some daiswheel typewriters which could be used as printers, Olivetti ET Compact 60 with LCU60S (serial), ET 116 with LCU 116 (2x serial), ET 2300 with Centronics, Praxis 35 with 3rd party Centronics, Underwood 3000 with 3rd party Centronics. Then Star NL10 with IEC & Centronics and ASF, Nec P6+ and a few more.
 
I had a couple of Daisywriter's that were daisywheel. They had RS-232, GPIB and 4-20ma current loop, all easily selected with just a few dip switches.

Had about 12 different character set wheels for them. Saw one the other day.

They were similar size to a large 132 column printer.

They used standard IBM typewriter cartridge ribbons.

Stupidly threw both out about 2 years ago. Well at least I think I did ! Need to go hunting right up in front of my 20ft shipping container; as I may have kept one.

I did use them, at various times with all of the different interfaces, so now missing them.
 
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