--------------------------<snip>----------------------------
Printers were fun sometimes. I once saw an IBM engineer who'd been told
by his boss to "clean the 1043s". I came upon the scene just after the
event, but it was obvious he dodn't know what he was doing. The usual
way was to take the ribbon off, put cleaning paper in the tractors
(funny stuff with a coating of tiny stiff nylon bristles), close the
gate and run a test pattern while manually advancing the cleaning paper.
The little bristles would prod out the slugs and carry off the old ink.
Not this guy. He opened the gate, took the ribbon off. sprayed (a lot of
- must have been) tape cleaner on the train and worked the gate
interlock with his thumb to power up the train. I heard the scream. He
was standing there, completely black across the waist, shading to grey
for inches above and below. The train had siezed and the train motor
overload had tripped.
It was a custom train, too.
-------------------------<unsnip>----------------------------------
Did that myself once, in my early days. It wasn't a custom train, just a
standard QN; but we ended up printing everything on a TN train for
several weeks while we waited for train repairs. Came out of my
paycheck. :-(
And I don't believe there's ANYTHING to take that ink out of a white shirt!
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