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Vintage Printers

VintageComputerman

VintageComputerman

Veteran Member
Joined
May 26, 2007
Messages
662
Location
WNY
Does anyone here collect vintage printers? How about vintage printer paper?
Printer drivers, etc.

I have several vintage printers myself and see many other older items regularly discarded as junk. I was just wondering if any one besides myself also collects printers. It doesn't seem right to collect just the computer. You need the entire working system, imo.

What are the best printers to collect?
 
I created a thread about this same subject a few weeks ago...Not much specifically said just in the vintage printer department, but all that responded to that post agree with you about the role of printers as part of the overall system/presentation. Having the printer that came with a system makes the overall system more complete.

I have a lot of Commodore printers, from the first PET 2023 and other IEEE's, as well as the later serial printers that came with the C64/128's.

I also have a slew of parallel printers, the oldest being my TI Omni 800 810 RO Terminal printer.

I have three ASR 33 teletypes in various stages of operation.

Lastly I have printers that came with odd systems, such as the Amstrad 256, Epson PX-8, Sinclair printers, Tandy printers, Apple printers, etc.

In all I probably have 25-30 printers. I have given away another 25 in the past years. I only like to keep one working example, and I give away the duplicates.

My holy grail - An early 60's Flexowriter, that works. I would also like an IBM 9000 with the built in printer.

Bill
Merry Christmas
 
I wouldn't say I collect 'em; they just sorta collect...

DEC, Epson, Citizen, OKI, Panasonic, HP, Raven, Roland, Tandy, Canon and a few more I can't remember right now... wish I could get rid of some but generally too heavy to ship anywhere; finally scrapped the Centronics & Diablos in case ya need parts.

Not to mention the cost to ship one of the boxes of paper...

mike
 
I tossed out a couple of Roland 1215 and their Panasonic counterpart recently because I couldn't even GIVE them away.

I just couldn't justify the space for them anymore as I have a few narrow-carriage d.m.p.s that I use if I need carbons for anything.

It was tough to do too since I keep all the stuff I have in working order. Talk about your workhorse printer line. The only things I ever had to do to the Roland/Raven/Panasonics was replace the occaisional printpin or the tractor cover when some gorrilla snapped one off.
 
Yeah, I've got three or four OKIs sitting out on the verandah gathering snow (and they *really* were workhorses); a shame since DM printers are still being used in a lot of places for receipts, service reports etc. Still need one myself pretty frequently for odd-sized continuous pinfeed paper.

Ya gotta keep one wide-carriage to print all that great old ASCII art!

m
 
After doing the self test on my Centronics 122 Graphics, I like it well enough to be interested in another like it and or documentation for same.
 
I can remember when banks were surplusing their 3-head wide carriage Diablo daisywheel printers. I was tempted, but didn't have a clue where I would put the thing, nor what I could have used it for.
 
I don't go out of my way to collect them, but I've had a few come with computers I've picked up. Currently the only one I have is a Kaypro-branded daisy-wheel that I got with my Kaypro 2X; I still haven't tried it to see if it works.
 
I also did the same thing with what you did, but after I got married, I started to think again because my wife less loved it and finally I just keep it in my warehouse until now. It's really so sad :(
 
I have a bunch of printing terminals:

- teletypes (various models)
- Flexowriters (various models)
- DEC LA36, LA34, LA120
- Data General TP1
- Diablo
- TI Silent 700 (various models)
- TI 980
 
My problem is that while living at home I have almost no space to set multiple machines up, no less with printers attached. I do still keep a small stash of specimens, notably dot matrix devices from companies like Roland, DEC, Canon and HP.

There is also a model 33 and a DECwriter III that reside in my bedroom though. They have permanent wired connections to computers in another room.
 
I got very lucky and found someone on Craigslist that was selling a practically new IBM/Lexnmark 4029 laser printer for a song - it had less that 25 pages printed in its life and works perfectly. Not only that, I was able to find the memory on ebay to max it out to the full 9MB and make it run in 600x600 native DPI, the 39 font Postscript (level 1) option board, every font card ever made for the printer, all of the soft fonts, and, just this week - all of the software and accessories for it - including the Windows 4029 print accelerator software. I feel very fortunate!

Regards,
Mike
 
I don't collect them, but I still have stashed away my Phillips 1550 (by C Itoh) wide format dot matrix printer that has the option of using tractor-feed paper. Uses the same ribbons as the std. size C.Itoh and early Apple printers. Both serial and parallel ports. Dumped my Daisy wheel printer years ago for MUCH quieter laser printers.
 
nc_mike said:
I got very lucky and found someone on Craigslist that was selling a practically new IBM/Lexnmark 4029 laser printer for a song - it had less that 25 pages printed in its life and works perfectly. Not only that, I was able to find the memory on ebay to max it out to the full 9MB and make it run in 600x600 native DPI, the 39 font Postscript (level 1) option board, every font card ever made for the printer, all of the soft fonts, and, just this week - all of the software and accessories for it - including the Windows 4029 print accelerator software. I feel very fortunate!

Regards,
Mike
Click to expand...

I have a pile of PPDS related software for 4019s/40129s if you're interested, including some software I wrote in the late 1990s to create new soft fonts for the DLF utility.

We used to have a 4019 and later got 4029s. The 4029s were significantly less reliable than the 4019. For comparision, we bought a 4019 E around 1990 and it lasted over 10 years (in theory it still works, but I haven't powered it on in a while). Our 4029s would blow logic boards regularly. We then got a 4039 which wasn't much better.

Nowadays we have a Lexmark E450dn which has a PPDS compatible mode that all the old PPDS software still works with.
 
I love printers. It may come from never having had one when I was a kid. A computer is pretty useless thing as an input-only device ;)

I have very limited space and so only try to keep a couple around and just made a big decision to get rid of old Epson side-format inkjet. I just didn't have room to use it.

So, I have :
Original IBM Proprinter (9pin dot-matrix), which almost anything will print to.
Panasonic KX-2123 (24pin dot-matrix) w/ color option, which is awesome if you can get a driver for it -- currently on a shelf. This can also take a Serial card to be used as a Serial Printer.
HP Laserjet 5mp -- again, almost anything can print to this. I did pull the PS module and added more memory, which made it a much more useful printer -- currently on a shelf.
Epson Sytlus 3000 -- Freshly given away.
Atari 825 -- some electronics fault, available to anyone who wants it.
OkiMate 10 with Atari SIO interface -- free available to anyone who wants it.

I had an opportunity a couple years ago to snag a Dec Writer III and I was regretting the refusal as I made it. :(

At this point the only "printer" I would really like is an IBM 2471, the "Selectric Terminal" -- damn, that'd be cool.


But yeah, a period correct printer really completes a system. Writing letters, making banners, cards and whatnot on a classic system on a classic output device -- well, let's just say they are ALWAYS a big hit when given as gifts.
 
Trixter said:
I feel very jealous. I had the choice of storing printers or storing computers, so I found new homes for the printers. I should have kept at least one postscript printer.
Click to expand...

So why not do both? :)

F85_front_small.jpg


(system includes multpass NLQ wide-carriage printer that can take either plain paper or tractor-feed)
 
I like how this thread started in 2007....but still relevant today or more so. There are vintages of printers just like computers. There are the vintage serial terminal printers (with keyboard such as the Decwriter's), vintage serial printers (print only on pedistal), vintage parallel printers (newer like the ProPrinter), color ink ribbon printers (OKI), daisywheel (Tandy, IBM), IEEE-488 (CBM 8023P etc), Diablo (any), Teletypes, Laserprinters (HP LJII and variants), portable printing, etc....so many vintages matching the many vintages of computer classes.

I think makes a nice display if the printer is included and I think there should be more printers in VCF exhibits/displays. It's so true that the printer was the vital component of computing before email, people forget how important it was to have a good printer. Also how long it took to print a term paper on a dot matrix printer. I remember sitting there, late for class waiting for a paper to print. EEEEEEEEGH EEEEEEEGH EEHG EEGH EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEGH....
 
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