Mastodon/the Fediverse is inhabited by people who would appreciate that I just printed moon@meow.social artwork on my dot matrix printer, right?
@M0YNG @moon @mattgrayyes I can hear the sound of this post. :)
@M0YNG @moon @mattgrayyes Very cool! I have matrix printer also waiting for a project. Dunno if the ink tape is good enough .. but that looks awesome!
@OH3CUF @M0YNG @moon @mattgrayyes
These are "line printers".
That print a full line at a time.
("Line Printer" is the origin of "/dev/lp" "lpr" or "LPT:" )
The most important part of a line printer is the soundproof lid !
Theses printers are deafening loud.
To add my own memories... the printer was in the middle of a room, surrounded by a bunch of Tektronix X11 terminals (XP17 ?) hooked to a VAX-11/780 running Unix System V.
Yes, an old VAX (named Asimov). This is where I learn to hate vi.
@F4JWJ @M0YNG @moon @mattgrayyes I know what you mean by soundproof lid. I've operated one, it was just awful without the lid. Hard to describe how loud it was.
@M0YNG @moon @mattgrayyes Great. Now I'm trawling Ebay for a dot matrix printer.
@mw1cgg @M0YNG @moon @mattgrayyes 9 pin or 24 pin?
@M0KHR @M0YNG @moon @mattgrayyes Now you're showing your age.
36 pin.
@mw1cgg @M0YNG @moon @mattgrayyes 36?!? That's luxury!
@M0KHR @M0YNG @moon @mattgrayyes Centronics baby. All the poshos had it.
@mw1cgg @M0YNG @moon @mattgrayyes Hang on, that's the port, we're talking about the head pins. Even my Commodore had both serial and Centronix parallel.
@mw1cgg @M0YNG @moon @mattgrayyes
All the printers I knew were 9 or 24 pin... Unless it's the big one in the Uni. I don't remember what it was, but it was IBM and 132 chars wide, and I had a quota of 30,000 chars (or was it lines) a month and I made sure I used it.
@M0KHR @M0YNG @moon @mattgrayyes In which case I have no idea. Can't remember which model we had, and unlike the amiga, my parents didn't leave it in the attic for me to find.
@mw1cgg @M0YNG @moon @mattgrayyes
I am not sure what happened to mine. I was still using it when I was in the uni late 90s.
@mw1cgg @M0YNG @moon @mattgrayyes
The serial interface for Commodore devices was a DIN socket - 6-pin, which the printer used. You would piggy back it through the disk drive, and the last thing connected would be the printer.
@M0KHR @M0YNG @moon @mattgrayyes It was RS-422 or something wasn't it?
@mw1cgg @M0YNG @moon @mattgrayyes Wiki says some sort of IEEE 488. For me, it was the commodore serial cable, simple.
@M0KHR @M0YNG @moon @mattgrayyes Ah, of course it was 488. I still have to deal with that for old school GPIB stuff.
@mw1cgg @M0YNG @moon @mattgrayyes Found it. IBM 4245.