[OT, WHIMSY] old experience with hardware, was Linux-compatible printer

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: Terrence Enger <tenger-P1ovA8G34VBEfu+5ix1nRw at public.gmane.org>

| The printer was a drum printer.  It weighed about a ton and it had a
| powered mechanism to open and close the cover.  It printed an amazing
| 132 columns on 15-inch continuous forms.

Are you sure that it didn't use a print train (or print chain)?
That's what IBM 1403 printers used.

http://www.quadibloc.com/comp/lineint.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_1403

This first is slightly wrong.  As it was explained to me back in the
day, a print chain has the slugs linked together like links in a
chain.  In a print train, they run around in a track without being
linked together.  Now that I've added the wikipedia citation, I see
that it says the same thing.

IBM did produce drum printers but they were older and slower.  Like 
the one in the IBM 407 or the IBM 1132 (really the same mechanism).
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_407
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_1132
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