Some more info on the VCF printers. 1. Nice Epson Wide carriage- powers on, but errors immediately and won't print a test page. 2. Diablo 630 - really cool looking printer, clean and powers but goes to alert, print head won't move. Also a daisywheel. 4. Okidata wide carriage- this powers and the test print actually starts but it prints one line and then goes into error condition 5. Decwriter III - this powers up, prints but the take-up spool for the ribbon doesn't work - the ribbon becomes more and more slack. 6.. Decwriter III - this powers up but has an error that won't clear, won't go into local mode. We really should get the Decwriter and the Diablo working. I'll take a look at them again with some help next week at the Repair day. We also need to setup a dos system luggable we can use for jobs like this, a Compaq luggable would be perfect with a network card in it to do ftp on the network. I'll ask for some help next weekend to see if any of the seven I saw in the warehouse can be made functional for this job. The next time we get a request like this, we should be prepared. -andy
On Feb 27, 2021, at 4:10 PM, Jeffrey Brace <jeffrey@vcfed.org> wrote:
OK. An update Andy looked at the printers that we have. A DEC Writer III seemed the best candidate, but it needs repair beyond our ability to fix. So it is a bust at VCF museum.
On Sat, Feb 27, 2021 at 1:55 PM Andrew Diller via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote: Most of the printers at VCF are daisy wheel. So far none of the dot matrix work.
I don’t think we can print from VCF.
— Andrew Diller 267-353-2203
On Feb 27, 2021, at 1:42 PM, Jameel Akari <jakari@bithose.com> wrote:
On Feb 27, 2021, at 12:09 PM, Andrew Diller <dillera@gmail.com> wrote:
Anyone want to talk on discord about this? Who is actually doing it?
Send me an invite to the appropriate Discord, I don’t seem to have it anymore. (Maybe I left because it was idle?)
I will go test my Proprinter and see if it works. It’s been a long time since I’ve tried, and I know I have a second non-working one so hopefully I haven’t confused the two.
I'm at InfoAge and we have greenbar, if needed I'll find a widecarrige printer and see if I can get it to print from a PC
Serial into a DECwriter if you can’t find a printer with a Centronics port. Oh, and a ribbon that isn’t fossilized. :/
.
Let me know if you are actually doing the print-out.
If my printer self-tests ok and I have a ribbon, I’ll fire up my test mule Linux PC that has a parallel port and give it a shot.
— Jameel
-andy
On Feb 27, 2021, at 9:45 AM, Bill Degnan via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
They want a printout only? Not a printer too, right? Bill
On Sat, Feb 27, 2021, 9:34 AM Jameel Akari via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
I was thinking the same - NLQ might be good enough, assuming the thing still works at all. An OfficeMax store-closing liquidation fated me a full case of greenbar.
-- Jameel Akari
On Feb 27, 2021, at 9:19 AM, Dean Notarnicola <dnotarnicola@gmail.com> wrote:
I was guessing that they would want wide carriage and impact printing, depending on the time period. I got my proprinter xl out of mothballs as well (the NLQ mode may be sufficient) , but the bigger challenge is finding greenbar on short notice.
> On Sat, Feb 27, 2021 at 9:14 AM Jameel Akari via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote: > > I will dust off my Proprinter XL and work on it too if the details include “dot-matrix is ok.” > >> From the context I’m guessing they’re really looking for that band/chain printer look that a 1980s DMP doesn’t have. > > -- > Jameel Akari > >> On Feb 26, 2021, at 11:28 PM, Bill Degnan via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote: >> >> Can you please send technical details of the printout? Ascii file? >> Characters per line? Is the printout file ready and all they need is a >> print or does thenoutput need to be formatted first? >> >> I recall you said it was roughly a hundred or so total pages? >> >> Maybe someone near the museum can look for the two DECwriter III's that >> might still be around the warehouse, or some other wide carriage printer >> there. If you put a new ribbon on one of those and attach to an old pc >> running word perfect paginated to 132 character lines you could at least >> try to print this at infoage. I bet there is some green bar in the >> warehouse >> >> When the file and details are available I would be happy to at least try to >> do of it too. >> >> Bill >
-- Jeff Brace ========================================= Vice President & Board Member Vintage Computer Festival East Show-runner Vintage Computer Federation is a 501c3 charity http://www.vcfed.org/ jeffrey@vcfed.org cell: 732-759-1783