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  • Printers (Re: Wang legacy systems)

    From Lars Poulsen@3:633/280.2 to All on Wed Feb 12 13:07:27 2025
    Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
    I think one genuine IBM innovation was the invention of chain printers,
    which did a much better job of this sort of thing.

    On 2025-02-12, Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> wrote:
    I think that, even with IBM, band printers have replaced chain printers. We had a DEC band printer (LP <something> maybe LP32) and it did a superb job.

    All high-speed printers have "jitter" on character positioning. Early
    line printers were drum printers, and the jitter showed up as vertical positioning instability, which looked very sloppy. On chain and band
    printers, the jitter was horizontal, so the lines still lokked straight.

    The advantage of the chain over the band was that it allowed for
    adjustments to the character set by replacing individual slugs in the
    chain. Important when supporting non-English languages.

    --- MBSE BBS v1.0.8.4 (Linux-x86_64)
    * Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (3:633/280.2@fidonet)
  • From Kerr-Mudd, John@3:633/280.2 to All on Wed Feb 12 21:33:01 2025
    :
    On Wed, 12 Feb 2025 02:07:27 -0000 (UTC)
    Lars Poulsen <lars@cleo.beagle-ears.com> wrote:

    Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
    I think one genuine IBM innovation was the invention of chain printers, >> which did a much better job of this sort of thing.

    On 2025-02-12, Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> wrote:
    I think that, even with IBM, band printers have replaced chain printers. We had a DEC band printer (LP <something> maybe LP32) and it did a superb job.

    All high-speed printers have "jitter" on character positioning. Early
    line printers were drum printers, and the jitter showed up as vertical positioning instability, which looked very sloppy. On chain and band printers, the jitter was horizontal, so the lines still lokked straight.

    The advantage of the chain over the band was that it allowed for
    adjustments to the character set by replacing individual slugs in the
    chain. Important when supporting non-English languages.

    Anyone remember daisywheel printers? OK, hardly mainframe speeds!

    --
    Bah, and indeed Humbug.

    --- MBSE BBS v1.0.8.4 (Linux-x86_64)
    * Origin: Dis (3:633/280.2@fidonet)
  • From Andy Walker@3:633/280.2 to All on Thu Feb 13 03:20:09 2025
    On 12/02/2025 13:29, Ted Nolan <tednolan> wrote:
    The Diablo 630 was the canonical daisywheel at least as far as control
    codes went. [...]
    We had one of those. The "engineer" who delivered it and attached it to
    our PDP 11 asked if he could borrow a hammer. It transpired that he'd
    dropped it in the car park and it was bent well and truly out of shape.
    We heard some hefty bangs, and he emerged triumphant: "It works now!".
    We were pretty dubious about accepting it; I forget what the sweetener
    was, but there was a signicant lead time for another one, so we took it,
    and, fair dos, it gave us years of good service.

    --
    Andy Walker, Nottingham.
    Andy's music pages: www.cuboid.me.uk/andy/Music
    Composer of the day: www.cuboid.me.uk/andy/Music/Composers/Bendel

    --- MBSE BBS v1.0.8.4 (Linux-x86_64)
    * Origin: Not very much (3:633/280.2@fidonet)
  • From Lawrence D'Oliveiro@3:633/280.2 to All on Thu Feb 13 09:25:13 2025
    On Wed, 12 Feb 2025 10:33:01 +0000, Kerr-Mudd, John wrote:

    Anyone remember daisywheel printers? OK, hardly mainframe speeds!

    They were referred to as “letter-quality” printers. That is, the output looked as good as electric typewriters. As opposed to lasers (still
    expensive at the time), which could offer “typeset quality”, of course.

    Later 24-bit dot-matrix printers claimed to offer “near-letter-quality”, while being a lot faster than the daisy wheels.

    Of course, Apple had to be different and offer a 27-pin product, the ImageWriter LQ. That was one of their few products that was genuinely
    crap.

    --- MBSE BBS v1.0.8.4 (Linux-x86_64)
    * Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (3:633/280.2@fidonet)