Re: Printer cards

[a2aviator@gmail.com]

The Wesper Systems card is a clone of the Epson  APL card. It uses a
straight out crimped 26 pin IDC  ribbon cable into a 36 pin
Centronics, it will go pin 1 to 1 and the remainder of the conductors,
27 and up go unused. The 'IPI' on that stands for 'Intelligent Printer
Interface', it's not the IPI-80 which has more features, this is
pretty much a clone of that Epson APL, "Epson Apple" card.

The Epson card uses a 20 pin cable that is not straight out, the pins
on the printer end jump around and it was usually a soldered assembly
at the printer end and crimp or 'pin insert' at the card end.
Typically the cable that came with it was a pale skin colored cable
that had the individual conductors separated along the ribbon every 4
inches or so, for easy bending/routing, unlike most other ribbon
cables that were all continuously flat/joined.

Both are graphic parallel cards - they are optimized for Epson ESC/P
codes. MX/FX 80 era as opposed to the C.Ioth 8510/ProWriter and later,
the ImageWriters, which were not exactly the same as the Epsons. ESC
vs. CTRL, as lead in, so CTRL-G instead of ESC, G, as an example.

Tony
tdiaz (a-t) apple(2)-peri0d-org