Doug Franklin wrote:
> On Tue, 18 Jan 2005 14:34:00 -0500 (EST), D. Glenn Arthur Jr. wrote:
> > The print head did not move -- it was a single row of pins that
> > extended all the way across the page. Something like 600 lines
> > per minute, I think, but I may have misremembered.
>
> Nope, there definitely were some of them that ran that fast. Those
> machines were _awesome_ (me being a geek and all). Plus, they made
> this really cool, high pitched *rrrrriiiiiiippppppp* sound as they
> printed. You expected the paper to turn to dust. :-)
Yup, yup, sounded way more like a shredder than a printer, except
for the added sound of paper flapping out the back of it! And
nowhere near as loud as the 350 lpm printer next to it that did
have a normal print head that shot back and forth across the page,
but did so Really Really fast. That one violently rocked the desk
it was on while making a sound as though a demon from Sluggy
Freelance was trapped inside and trying to escape. The 600 lpm
just made that ripping noise you described and produced almost no
vibration. It was indeed awesome.
We had it hooked to an Intel 310 running a special Intel version
of Xenix 3.mumble (a few more Berkeleyisms than standard Xenix 3,
IIRC). The machine on which I learned Unix by being told, "Go be
sysadmin of that".
The first laser printer I saw had two modes, the more useful of
which was an emulation of a popular daisy-wheel printer of the
time with the addition of a few font-change commands that didn't
work very well. (I think the other mode was a severely broken
Epson emulation.) As I recall, it didn't do graphics at all.
Huh. This thinking about retrocomputing has reminded me that
I need to figure out how to get some software off my Lisa and
onto something else so I can find out whether it'll run in the
"Classic" environment under Mac OS X the next time I visit my
girlfriend. (Just because the question came up at a party and
now I'm wondering whether Mac software backwards compatability
is really as impressive as Pentax lens/body backwards compatability.
I figure "Classic" under OS X is kind of like the M42-K adaptor,
and if I can run Lisa software under that, it'd be analogous to
using the 39mm-M42 adaptor to stick a really ancient lens on
an *ist-D, right? But you obviously can't run OS X code on
a Lisa because, ah, uh, the diameter of the mount would require
changing the registration distance, yeah, that's it! (Okay, okay,
the analogy breaks down unless I can figure out what "the software
runs but you lose infinity focus" could possibly mean.))
Oy, I just reread that last paragraph and realized it's a good
thing I didn't try to drive to rehearsal feeling like this...
-- Glenn
PS: What would an Apple II emulator under OS X be analogous
to in lens-mount compatibility terms?
