[ale] Need Tractor Feed Dot Matrix printer

Geoffrey esoteric at 3times25.net
Thu Dec 9 11:59:08 EST 2004


James P. Kinney III wrote:
> On Thu, 2004-12-09 at 11:22, Jeff Hubbs wrote:
> 
>>I'm that ancient.  That's what I was hacking on starting at the age of
>>13.
> 
> 
> Ditto. Megs of ram was an unobtainable luxury. My first exposure was
> industrial process testing computers. They had basically a teletype
> terminal and the final testing output was on paper tape. Ugh. There was
> a small display that held a 1 line buffer so the line could be verified
> before entering the command. I never had to boot of these as once it
> came up, noone, and I mean NO ONE, wanted to have to restart it.
> Apparently it was quite an ordeal loading paper tape instruction sets
> and flipping toggle switches to get the system in the right working
> mode.

Been there.  pdp7  input was a bunch of toggle switches.  Set them, then 
submit. Screw one of, start all over.  And you didn't know until then 
end when it didn't come up. :)

-- 
Until later, Geoffrey



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