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From: grog at lemis.com (Greg 'groggy' Lehey)
Subject: [COFF] Daisy wheel printers (was: [TUHS] The Elements Of Style: UNIX As Literature)
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 2020 15:36:19 +1100	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20201109043619.GO99027@eureka.lemis.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CAC20D2PHRMsTGb2uZstUr7zjkU5mnOe=d0K8SnW-KBNf13empQ@mail.gmail.com>

On Saturday,  7 November 2020 at 16:04:16 -0500, Clem Cole wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 6, 2020 at 5:58 PM Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog at lemis.com> wrote:
>
>> My memory is hazy, but I thought that the daisy wheel printers I knew
>> (Qume Sprint\5) also had proportional spacing.
>
> I never used that brand.   Xerox (which was the main USA supplier as a pure
> typewriter to compete with IBM's Selectric 'ball' units) were definitely
> fixed width.   People started to hack the Xerox units to add access to
> serial interface and Xerox made it standard or maybe an option as
> somepoint.     IIRC it was somebody like Ollivetti that originally did the
> daisywheel and Xerox licensed it and they definitely were the primary
> player here.  But by the late 70s, early 80's, there were a number of
> manufacturers of them.

The Qume printers seemed to have been the best round 1980 when we used
them in our applications.  In particular, a large choice of wheels and
fine-grained spacing.  I forget how the spacing worked.

> But by the late 1970's the serial interface was a first class part
> of the unit, which made them different from IBM Selectrics which did
> not have an easy to access serial interface, even though IBM used
> the printer mechanism from the Selectric as the guts of the console
> for the 360 which I think was called a 2150 but the bits in my brain
> on that are extremely stale.

The golfball console for the /360 was much earlier than that, like the
/360 itself.  The model numbers I recall were 735, and the newer
generation 2731/2735.  The last digit related to the carriage width
(11"/15").

Round the time in question I bought a second-hand 735 machine.  It had
an arcane interface that directly talked to the magnets.  I built an
interface for it to a parallel port, but it never worked well.  Not
the interface: the 735 was second-hand and basically worn out, and it
kept coming out of adjustment.  The Qume machines were *so* much
easier to use.

Greg
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  parent reply	other threads:[~2020-11-09  4:36 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 23+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
     [not found] <CAEuQd1AWs=jpHYk3nGpKsBV=qF4DZVXvXzynSeDK5S-r-hfryw@mail.gmail.com>
     [not found] ` <20201106014109.GP26296@mcvoy.com>
     [not found]   ` <CAD2gp_Q-wTvG2cAW5goJFYW3A6qF9zOuTh=Y4Kahh0nLBtof2Q@mail.gmail.com>
     [not found]     ` <20201106063725.GB99027@eureka.lemis.com>
     [not found]       ` <5BE1CBD5-C9EB-45D4-B135-E58BCCCBE38C@gmail.com>
     [not found]         ` <3c54b19d-e604-68eb-2b4b-0b65e9cfb896@earthlink.net>
2020-11-06 17:56           ` [COFF] [TUHS] The Elements Of Style: UNIX As Literature clemc
     [not found]       ` <20201106150609.GR26296@mcvoy.com>
     [not found]         ` <CALMnNGg=9KHCwqaqdFESBQr=Ru_qzM=x-S2fc=ewgJNf2zLRFQ@mail.gmail.com>
     [not found]           ` <20201106222302.GG26411@mcvoy.com>
2020-11-07  0:16             ` dave
     [not found]     ` <CAKzdPgx1Ptu=sahO3o5KYS-A=vnfXK-hs=QeVwO_Vd1cFfaeqw@mail.gmail.com>
     [not found]       ` <a588c934-e403-2a4e-4701-669b8c14e989@gmail.com>
     [not found]         ` <CAC20D2PPw3Ua3-VpMYjh=NaC09=9Q528kqEvE7SvmO3Ly2JO0A@mail.gmail.com>
     [not found]           ` <175409f6-af94-601e-3db3-a5af5d7f64d0@gmail.com>
2020-11-06 15:53             ` clemc
2020-11-06 19:22               ` tytso
2020-11-06 19:24                 ` clemc
2020-11-06 22:58               ` grog
2020-11-07 21:04                 ` clemc
2020-11-07 23:05                   ` dave
2020-11-09  4:36                   ` grog [this message]
2020-11-09 14:26                     ` [COFF] Daisy wheel printers (was: [TUHS] The Elements Of Style: UNIX As Literature) clemc
2020-11-10  0:10                       ` grog
2020-11-10 14:48                         ` clemc
2020-11-10 15:10                           ` stewart
2020-11-09 22:08                     ` dave
2020-11-10  0:48                       ` grog
     [not found]             ` <202011061546.0A6Fkv3D034443@elf.torek.net>
2020-11-06 16:22               ` [COFF] [TUHS] The Elements Of Style: UNIX As Literature clemc
2020-11-06 18:12                 ` torek
2020-11-07  2:52                 ` cym224
     [not found]               ` <20201106225422.GD99027@eureka.lemis.com>
     [not found]                 ` <20201106232901.AkY2I%steffen@sdaoden.eu>
2020-11-07  4:22                   ` grog
2020-11-07 20:31                     ` steffen
2020-11-11  8:31           ` [COFF] " peter
2020-11-11 12:21             ` tih
2020-11-11 21:09             ` dave

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