> On May 25, 2016, at 9:16 PM, Paul Berger <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> ...
> Yeah I watch some of the large system guys disassemble and repair trains and
> of course when you put them back together you had to make sure the slugs
> where all in the right order. We had customers that would buy 3rd party
> ribbons that where practically dripping with ink that would gum up everything
> in the machine.
Speaking of ribbons, in college I occasionally used a type of ribbon I've never
seen on line printers since: a film ribbon. Think of the "letter quality"
ribbons used on professional typewriters, or daisy wheel printers, a thin
plastic film with some carbon-like coating on one side. Now make one the width
of a line printer ribbon.
Our 360/44 normally used a regular cloth ribbon, but a film ribbon could be
mounted if desired. I did so to print my honor's thesis, using the film ribbon
and the upper/lower case print train (TN train?) to print the final text (from
RUNOFF on our PDP-11 system, which had no line printer).
paul
