[sebhc] printer driver

[Barry Watzman]

For all of it's faults, when the H-14 came out, it was a blockbuster
product.  You have to put yourself in the correct timeframe.  When it came
out, in 1978, there was NOTHING available in the way of a reasonable printer
(excluding various used and surplus products) under about $1,000.  Sure, the
H-14 had it's limits, but for about 18 months, it was the least expensive
printer you could buy, and it DID work.

The biggest widespread problem was that as originally shipped, the drive to
the paper feed motor was inadequate, and sometimes line feeds ... didn't.
This was fixed with a modification board that was added beginning a few
months after initial production, and which was also made available for
retrofit to earlier customers.  My recollection is that it was mounted
vertically in the back right-hand corner of the printer.


-----Original Message-----
From: sebhc at sebhc.org [mailto:sebhc at sebhc.org] On Behalf Of Dave Dunfield
Sent: Tuesday, February 22, 2005 12:18 PM
To: sebhc at sebhc.org
Subject: Re: [sebhc] printer driver

>Boy isn't that the the truth!!! I built one of those babies when
>they first came out, for use with my Altair, and If I remember
>it used to calculate the printhead temp by monitoring the resistance
>of one of the printhead coils?  That was aggravating, as it would only
>print about a page and a half, before going "over temp", and then would
>print a line or two, and cool for 5 to 10 minutes, before printing the next
>line or two.  Then to top it off, the handshake between it and the Altair
>was not bullet-proof, and the end result was always a useless printout.
>I thought I had died and gone to heaven when I could finally afford a used
>Centronics 701!!  Anybody know if the printhead was ever upgraded?

My first printer (other than a teletype) was also an H-14, which I used
on my Altair, and I do recall the thermal limiting after you had printed
a few lines. I don't think mine waited "5 to 10" minutes, but I do recall
that it would go into mode with a few second delay between each line that
was printed. I also don't recall handshake problems - I did many a printout
on that combination.


By sheer coincience, my H-14 came back to me about a month ago - Gave it to
a guy *many* years ago, and since lost touch - made contact again this year,
and he still had it in his basement - haven't tried to fire it up yet, but
it still looks to be in reasonable shape. One thing that didn't come back
with it is the manual ... anyone have a scan of the H14 manual?


My very first printer was a Teletype Model-28, which I generated baudot data
for by toggleing the interrupt-enable line on my first homebuilt 8080
(didn't
use interrupts in that system) - not thats going a long way back!

Regards,
Dave
-- 
dave04a (at)    Dave Dunfield
dunfield (dot)  Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com
com             Collector of vintage computing equipment:
                http://www.parse.com/~ddunfield/museum/index.html


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