[COFF] IBM 1403 line printer on DEC computers?

[Paul Winalski <paul.winalski@gmail.com>]

There's been a discussion recently on TUHS about the famous IBM 1403
line printer.  It's strayed pretty far off-topic for TUHS so I'm
continuing the topic here in COFF.

DEC marketed its PDP-10 computer systems as their solution for
traditional raised-floor commercial data centers, competing directly
with IBM System 360/370.  DEC OEMed a lot of data center peripherals
such as card readers/punches, line printers, 9-track magtape drives,
and disk drives for their computers, but their main focus was low cost
vs. heavy duty.  Not really suitable for the data center world.

So DEC OEMed several high-end data center peripherals for use on big,
commercial PDP-10 computer systems.  For example, the gold standard
for 9-track tape drives in the IBM world was tape drives from Storage
Technology Corporation (STC).  DEC designed an IBM selector
channel-to-MASSBUS adapter that allowed one to attach STC tape drives
to a PDP-10.  AFAIK this was never offered on the PDP-11 VAX, or any
other of DEC's computer lines.  They had similar arrangements for
lookalikes for IBM high-performance disk drives.

Someone on TUHS recalled seeing an IBM 1403 or similar line printer on
a PDP-10 system.  The IBM 1403 was certainly the gold standard for
line printers in the IBM world and was arguably the best impact line
printer ever made.  It was still highly sought after in the 1970s,
long after the demise of the 1950s-era IBM 1400 computer system it was
designed to be a part of.  Anyone considering a PDP-10 data center
solution would ask about line printers and, if they were from the IBM
world, would prefer a 1403.

The 1403 attached to S/360/370 via a byte multiplexer channel, so one
would need an adapter that looked like a byte multiplexer channel on
one end and could attach to one of DEC's controllers at the other end
(something UNIBUS-based, most likely).

We know DEC did this sort of thing for disks and tapes.  The question
is, did they have a way to attach the 1403 to any of their computer
systems?

-Paul W.