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

[Terrence Enger]

On Sun, 2009-12-06 at 01:11 -0500, D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote:

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

Do definitly a drum.  It was 8 or 10 inches in diameter.  The raised
characters of the printable set were arranged around the circumference,
and this was repeated 132 times at intervals of 1/10 inch along the
length of the drum.

Another classic feature was the forms control tape.  I forget whether it
was five- or seven-level.  The company had a jig which held the tape and
guided the hand-held punch as you punched out the requisite holes.  Then
you cut off a length of tape and glued it into a loop the length of the
page.  The bit positions--or was it the bit patterns?--in a column of
the tape are what documentation refers to when it talks about "skip to
channel number".  

The funny thing is that after somebody showed me how to prepare one of
the tapes, nobody else in the installation would admit to knowing how to
do it.

Cheers,
Terry.


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