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Vintage Printers Anyone?

I have an IBM 4029 10ppm 600dpi printer in great condition with less than 50 pages printed. It has the 39 font postscript (level 1) option with the full 9MB of expansion RAM on board.

Mike
 
Anyone have band or train printers? The Teletype Model 40 Dataspeed printer was somewhat popular as an inexpensive high-speed line printer. I think I still have the schematics for one. You did need a sound-deadening enclosure for it as the the thing was very loud. Fed with standard 14 7/8" x 11" continuous "green bar" forms. ISTR the print speed was about 150 LPM.

M40-ROP-1a.jpg
 
I've collected quite a few vintage printers over the last few years. I'm mostly interested in color printers. Making the printers work is easy compared to finding drivers. Models include:

Tektronix 4695 color ink jet
IBM 3852 color in jet (Canon PJ-1080a clone)
IBM PC color printer
Panasonic KX-P2124 color 24 pin
IBM color plotter (hp 7440a rebrand)
hp 7550 plus plotter
Apple Imagewriter II and LQ
Commodore MPS1000 (Epson LX-80 rebrand)

I also have a Laserjet 4+ that I use every day. It's a good printer, but I have had issues lately. First, the power supply and control boards were full of leaking caps. This was causing dirty printouts and made it extremely picky about toner cartridges. I also found leaking caps in the duplex unit.

The other issue is finding good toner cartridges at a reasonable price is getting difficult. Most of my new old stock cartridges had rotten foam rubber gaskets and a bad rubber wiper. If they don't leak and work at first, they usually develop dark streaks after a few months. Some ebay refurbs I bought were also unusable for the same reasons. I now only buy sealed genuine hp cartridges that are in boxes that have the current (mostly black) graphics on the box. They seem to have a shelf life of about 10-15 years tops before the rubber parts degrade. This is reduced if they were stored in a hot warehouse.
 
Recently dug out a Canon 5500 A2 inkjet printer from where it has been stored for the best part of 15 years. Powered it up, worked out how to get some paper in it, and printed a test page. I was astonished, you could see the print inproving as it went across and down the page. Even have some original black cartridges for it. Now what?
 
I forgot, I have even more...

There is a Commodore MPS 801 for C-64. I also have a Triumph Adler Gabriele 9009 daisywheel typewriter with IEC interface for C-64. The typewriter works, but I don't know how to get it "online" for printing.

I also have a Canon Bubble Jet BJ300 with ASF. That is a great inkjet printer, I used it a lot with my Atari ST computers, it emulates Epson LQ or IBM proprinter 24 pin, but with much better quality. Unfortunately the print head has dryed out, I have to find a way to clean it.

I have also ATARI SMM-804 9 pin dot matrix printer for Atari ST, this one is quite rare. I also have two ATARI SLM-804 and SLM-605. But none of those lasers is really operationally, one of the 804 has broken heater, and both have bad transfer drum kit. The one which is operative can print like a world champion, but you almost see no toner on the paper. For the 605 I have new drum kit, additional toner, but both have power supply problems.

SInce a few weeks I also have a compact HP laser jet 4 series printer with 2 MB RAM, 600 DPI, which works good, currently connected to my ATARI TT.

And my regular, ocasionally used printer on my current Windows boxes is also already almost vintage, a Brother HL-1450. (I don't print much, and I have some toner cardridges and drum kit spares as a few years ago one of my clients scrapped a douzen of these printers, so I grabbed what I need... This materials will last many more years) I think this HL-1450 was my best printer buy ever. I think I bought it in about year 2001.

There are also two small Oki LED 500 lasers, one is tested ok, but just 512 kB page memory is joke-less. The other is untested. Maybe I scrap them, I don't need them anymore since I have the Laserjet 4.

I would love to have a special thermo printer from Olivetti. I don't know it's model name, but it is from the beginning of the 1980's. It's not using any ribbon, but anyhow it prints on standard paper, by burning black dots in the paper. I saw it once, and it looks fascinating to observe this printer, as you can see little flashes from the printhead to the paper (and the metal plate behind the paper).
 
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I have a fascination with pen plotters. :) I only have two so far, but I like them. An Amdek DXY-100 (Roland's first plotter before they were Roland), and a Roland DXY-1300 (their last desktop pen plotter, not including vinyl cutters using pens.) Unfortunately, I can't find any pens for the DXY-100. It was before everyone started using the HP style pens.

I'd love to get one of those giant drafting pen plotters. Not the kind with the drum, but the huge table kind. I love watching the pens move across the gantry. They had one at our local tech museum. You could design a bicycle, then have it print out on a gigantic 4 color pen plotter. It was really cool.

Evil Mad Geniuses released a modern pen plotter with adjustable holder so you can use stuff like calligraphy pens. :) I'm waiting for their 11x17 version which they said should be out soon.
 
Hi!
I am collected the several vintage printers and printer accessories in past years.
TEC F10-40 (daisywheel);
Epson LQ-2550 (24 pin colour);
Fujitsu DL-3310 (24 pin colour);
Brother M-1924L (24 pin, colour kit wanted) with SF-240 CSF;
Facit E-560 (24 pin, colour upgrade wanted);
Huyndai HDP-920 (9 pin);
Epson LQ-100 (24 pin);
Colour kit for Epson LX-300;
CSF for Epson FX-850;
 
I have acquired a number of printers over the years, largely in conunction with some of the computers (and calculators) I've acquired. Here is a partial list:

  • ALPS MD-2010
  • ALPS MD-1000
  • Apple Dot Matrix Printer
  • (2) Apple Imagewriter II
  • Apple Laserwriter
  • Atari 1027
  • C. Itoh 8510
  • Citizen 200GX
  • Coleco Adam Printer
  • Commodore MPS-1250
  • Hewlett-Packard 82240A
  • Okidata Microline 320
  • Sharp CE-150
  • Sharp CE-125
  • TRS-80 26-3591
  • Tandy DMP-135
  • Texas Instruments PC-100A
  • Texas Instruments PC-100C
  • Toshiba ExpressWriter 311

Some of them are mini-printers which go with my calculators and pocket computers (the TRS-80 one is meant to go with the PC-3, and is actually a mini-plotter!). Most of them are dot-matrix, though the Laserwriter is quite interesting (actually uses a faster 68000 CPU than the Macs of the time!), and both the Coleco Adam printer (which doesn't work) and the Atari 1027 are daisywheel printers. The ALPS ones are "Micro-Dry" printers, which use special wax ribbons, and are capable of printing in white and metallic colors.

The Apple DMP was the first printer I ever used; was interesting learning how all the switches like 'on-line' and 'line feed' worked. The Commodore MPS-1250 may be one of the best printers they sold; made for them by Citizen, it has both Commodore serial and Centronics parallel connectors on the side. The Tandy DMP-135 is fairly decent compared to some of the other printers they sold, though I don't think it works with older TRS-80 computers.

In addition to these, I've also acquired a number of old-style typewriters. The one I've been playing around with a lot as of late is the IBM Correcting Selectric II. The entire Selectric series is rather fascinating, since the mechanism is essentially a mechanical-digital computer. I also have a later IBM Wheelwriter 2000, which uses a daisywheel instead of the old 'type-ball'; it isn't as interesting as the Selectrics, though it does have some nice features like memory and spell-check.
-Adam
 
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