On Thu, Apr 30, 2026 at 01:19:34PM -0400, Ethan Dicks via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
On Thu, Apr 30, 2026 at 10:38 AM Herb Johnson via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
In terms of printing at events, teletypes get some exposure, and they should. I've only ever seen a line printer once or twice at VCF, and only a few desktop-sized dot-matrix printers.
I've brought my low end chain printer twice. Did have a printer with my setup this year but didn't use it a lot.
I can't recall ever seeing a printing console (LA36/LA120/etc) on a minicomputer at any VCF over the past 20 years.
Looks like the last time I had one was 2019 and it was just a LA100. When getting ready for a different event found most of my DEC printing terminals aren't working. Yet more things to fix.
I don't even use them at home because of the cost of a box of fanfold paper. I would set one up for ASCII art but not to just chew through half a box of paper to make some noise.
For a while every time I brought a wide carrage printer someone gave me a box of paper they didn't want so went home with more paper than I came with. For ascii art type stuff I mostly printed what people asked for with some printing to just attract so never used more than a couple inches for the weekend. Even my chain printer is only 125 lines per minute so that limits paper usage. Last time I did ascii and plotter art I seemed to have less interest. Couldn't decide if VCF has gotten enough bigger that people don't spend as much time at each exhibit or there is less interest. Or my presentation isn't attractive to newer people.