If anyone wants them, especially if they'll demo them, I've got a pair of Printronix line printers, one on a roll-around stand, one IIRC new in the box, plus consumables. They're free if you want to come to central VA and get them! These two came out of a typesetting shop in Michigan, they were used to run off pre-print proofs. The NIB one was the shop spare. Thanks, Jonathan On Thursday, April 30th, 2026 at 20:59, Mike Loewen via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
I demoed a Xerox-branded Diablo 630 at VCF East in 2016 as part of my Xerox 820-II Office Suite exhibit. People showed interest in the daisywheel printer.
On Thu, 30 Apr 2026, Dave Shevett via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
Oh I'm very sad I didn't get to see your Spinwriter! I worked on those, and for showing what a hard core impact printer was like, you really can't beat then. Those things were tanks.
On Thu, Apr 30, 2026 at 8:11 PM Alexander Pierson via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
People seemed to like my NEC Spinwriter 5520 this year, even if I didn't have it do much more than printing OS65A output and game diagnostics. 51 lbs of inconvenience! Seriously though, it seems to me that the opinions on printers sorta shifted in the past decade when it comes to collecting and displaying, and I'm not sure what happened. Dot matrix, daisy wheel, typewriter -- whatever technology, if you can integrate it into an exhibit somehow, and possibly make feelies out of it for souvenirs, all the better of an experience. A few folks asked to print drawings from our Windows 95 exhibit last year on the dot matrix, which was a fun thing to offer. I also brought a Seikosha along once with my VIC exhibit, where it came in handy for checking my source code on long form programs.
Has anyone seen an exhibit with an operational Okimate 10 or 20? If so, I want to talk to whomever pulled that off, as I'd like to get one of mine going some time on my CBM kit. Celebrate the printers while we still have the harder-to-replace ink resources of the oddball models.
-Z On Thursday, April 30, 2026 at 07:10:08 PM EDT, Bill Degnan via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
I ran an exhibit that had a cbm SuperPet running pascal, with output to a CBM IEEE printer. b
On Thu, Apr 30, 2026 at 5:37 PM Dave Shevett via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
This was the basis of my exhibit plans months ago. I was bringing DECmates and my DEC LQP02 to show office printing on a daisywheel printer. Unfortunately both of my DECmates are non functional so I had to pivot.
This year the IBM crew had a very nice high speed wide body dot matrix printer running. That was a great exhibit.
On Thu, Apr 30, 2026 at 5:22 PM David Gesswein via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
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.
Mike Loewen mloewen@cpumagic.scol.pa.us Old Technology http://q7.neurotica.com/Oldtech/