[ale] Need Tractor Feed Dot Matrix printer

[James P. Kinney III]

Well, to add myself into the quasi-old fart crowd:

The first chunk of technology even closely resembling a computer I ever
used/programed was a very large room full of industrial computers. I
think they were built by IBM and Perken-Elmer. They were test automation
systems at GE where my dad worked (and I got to do the "heavy lifting
hardware" end of several science fair projects). The main "control
panel" had a series of toggle switches (more than 40) that were used to
set the run mode. Then, based on that, other sub-panels were activated
for further toggle-switch fun. There was no display or keyboard. Data
out was by either punch tape for input into another system or by tractor
feed dot matrix for "live" analysis. The entire system was in a double
insulated, double grounded room the size of a small house trailer. It
was parked in the middle of the production room floor and had a series
of about a dozen 10" conduits feeding out of it for running thin-net
cable to all of the measurement sites through out the facility. There
was just barely enough room for 3 people to squeeze in.

The big fun with this was if any of the toggle switches were set wrong,
the printer would start spitting out paper at about 1'/s when the system
was switched on. The project I was doing used about half of the
available panel in the system so the switch count was in the mid
hundreds. It would take _HOURS_ to set them up!

It couldn't print any kind of graphs. Each loop through, it would print
out a registry dump chart. 

Just before the plant was closed in 1998, my dad told me the entire
system had eventually been replaced with a single 386 with 2 5.25 floppy
drives, one to boot, one to choose the program to run.

My dad wanted to go back over to the old trailer sitting out back now
and torch it! All of the engineers truly hated that thing.

I just want the toggle switches.

On Fri, 2005-05-27 at 09:02 -0400, Mark Wright wrote:
> James P. Kinney III Jokingly called me an "Ol Fart " because of the  
> stories I posted in this thread.  It really is amazing how fast  
> technology has changed because I am not old but I have seen a lot of  
> incredible technology come and go.
> 
> As technology goes I bet there are a lot of folks who wouldn't know  
> what a "trash 80" was.  That was what prompted me to include  
> Christopher in the "Computer Ol Fart" category that MR. Kinney  
> nominated me for.
> 
> I think anyone that used or owned an XT should qualify.
> 
> Mark
> 
> 
> On May 27, 2005, at 7:54 AM, Geoffrey wrote:
> 
> > Mark Wright wrote:
> >
> >> You old fart.  ;-)
> >>
> >
> > Pushing 30 is an old fart???  I'm just sitting this side of 50.   
> > Now, my first computer was an abacus....
> >
> > -- 
> > Until later, Geoffrey
> > _______________________________________________
> > Ale mailing list
> > Ale at ale.org
> > http://www.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
> >
> >
> 
> _______________________________________________
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-- 
James P. Kinney III          \Changing the mobile computing world/
CEO & Director of Engineering \          one Linux user         /
Local Net Solutions,LLC        \           at a time.          /
770-493-8244                    \.___________________________./
http://www.localnetsolutions.com

GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics)
<jkinney at localnetsolutions.com>
Fingerprint = 3C9E 6366 54FC A3FE BA4D 0659 6190 ADC3 829C 6CA7
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