Just found this beauty for 7$ at my local goodwill, works great but unfortunately I don't have the tractor feed attachment so I have to manually load regular printer paper. Which is fine with me. 😁

It's really loud and slow but it's too cool not to use. 🤣 Besides it really looks great set up next to my packard. 😁

(Feature List from box)

- 180 characters per second (cps) draft speed
- 30 cps Near Letter Quality (NLQ) speed
- Tractor for continuous form paper
- Automatic single sheet loading
- Roman and Sens Serif fonts
- Graphics capability
- Built-in 3k internal memory
- Easy to use front control panel
- Compatibility with virtually all personal computers and application software
- Parallel interface
- Complete documentation.
- One year limited warranty

I only retired mine when it became impossible to get decent quality ribbon. I guess a little over a decade back.

I presume it's the same dead-end with typewriters. (Still pine for a Selectric sometimes, but the ribbon issue keeps me from dragging one home.)

What model did you have?

-

Can't remember! Which is unfair, so I did try looking it up but I find nothing for it inside /drivers -- guess 98 autodetected fine. Pretty similar to yours. Quite possibly Epson.

Had a nice metal rack so it could sit over the stack of tractor feed paper. Like floppy boxes, those racks used to be all over the thrift stores but are quite vanished now.

JidaiGeki wrote:

Won this on eBay recently - was advertised as an AWE32, but turned out to be an SB32. Not too fussed, it's an impressive looking […]
Show full quote

Won this on eBay recently - was advertised as an AWE32, but turned out to be an SB32. Not too fussed, it's an impressive looking card 😎

Also picked up the following two (untested) cards in a big and very cheap haul of mostly Apple cables and SCSI stuff:

(Compaq/Creative CT5805)

(XWave card)

EDIT: Any suggestions for a good free image hosting service?

That's a pet peeve of mine, when someone describes a Soundblaster 32 as an AWE 32. It's easy to spot the difference, though, because a real AWE32 has AWE written in big block letters on the main sound processor chip. The SB32 just says Creative. The SB32 is the 32 bit equivalent of a Vibra.

King_Corduroy wrote:

Just found this beauty for 7$ at my local goodwill, works great but unfortunately I don't have the tractor feed attachment so I have to manually load regular printer paper. Which is fine with me. 😁

Ah, the 80's. Epson pretty much dominated the dot matrix printer market. The FX/MX/LX lines were supported universally across all platforms. It was hard to go wrong with an Epson no matter which computer you used.

pewpewpew wrote:

Can't remember! Which is unfair, so I did try looking it up but I find nothing for it inside /drivers -- guess 98 autodetected fine. Pretty similar to yours. Quite possibly Epson.

Had a nice metal rack so it could sit over the stack of tractor feed paper. Like floppy boxes, those racks used to be all over the thrift stores but are quite vanished now.

That's too bad though, personally mine did not detect correctly right away I had to go and get the drivers from Epson's site but once I did it worked perfectly!

I saw a larger (and older I assume) epson dot matrix printer in it's original box a few months ago but I didn't buy it unfortunately. It had one of those large racks on it, those look really cool. Frankly I'm a little surprised these printers are still popping up in 2014 but I guess it makes sense because of their amazing reliability and ability to print carbon copies of receipts.

My printer here uses the Epson 8750 ink ribbon cartridge which thankfully seems to still be available in abundance on the web.

Picked up a HP 200LX, listing said it doesn't work, hoping I can repair it.

Edit: For fun I chucked in some batteries....

Oh man that thing is so cool!

Nice!

It should run games too, it contains a CGA chip. Basically an IBM XT in your pocket.

King_Corduroy wrote:

My printer here uses the Epson 8750 ink ribbon cartridge which thankfully seems to still be available in abundance on the web.

Ah... I said impossible to get "decent quality" for good reason. Finding stock was no problem, but everyone carried the same lowest-bid Chinese dreck that was only shaped like real cartridges. Grey is not Black. And even that Grey got less-Grey before halfway through those reels. It was total rubbish.

Printer was a Roland Raven btw. That much memory came back during dishes.

Very cool! I had no idea roland made printers!

Hmm, well my current ink seems rather grey. I may still obtain one and see if it isn't a little bit better, after all whats 4$?

I'd been after a USB-to-SCSI converter for a few months now, in hopes of interfacing an Iomega Jaz drive with my laptop, from which every other removable media type used by my "retro" systems is currently accessible. For whatever reason, these converters are insanely overpriced - especially those offering USB2.0 compatibility and Windows 7 (64-bit) drivers.

Whilst digging around in a tucked-away bin at the Seattle REPC store last week, I was delighted to find...

...a genuine, RATOC Systems "U2 SUCKS" USB2.0 Ultra SCSI converter. This will likely go down as the best $1.00 I've ever spent.

🤣 That is awesome. Nice find.

Cloudschatze wrote:

I'd been after a USB-to-SCSI converter for a few months now, in hopes of interfacing an Iomega Jaz drive with my laptop, from which every other removable media type used by my "retro" systems is currently accessible. For whatever reason, these converters are insanely overpriced - especially those offering USB2.0 compatibility and Windows 7 (64-bit) drivers.

Whilst digging around in a tucked-away bin at the Seattle REPC store last week, I was delighted to find...

...a genuine, RATOC Systems "U2 SUCKS" USB2.0 Ultra SCSI converter. This will likely go down as the best $1.00 I've ever spent.

BUT does it have W7 drivers is the question?

🤣

smeezekitty wrote:

BUT does it have W7 drivers is the question?

It does, yes.

King_Corduroy wrote:

I love my Packard Bell Platinum 55. Wish I could say I had the monitor and correct mouse but alas I do not. 😜

I guess the jury is still out on my monitor. When I used it for a day or so the image started to blur visibly... They are cool systems though.