Silicon Sam wrote:
Michael J. Mahon wrote:Yep--that's its C. Itoh "built like a locomotive" legacy. ;-) -michaelI built a test bed to repair DMP and Imagewriter motherboards, and it was weird. The only difference in the two as far as connections to the mechanism was the head home position sensor. So I just placed 2 sensors side by side, one for the DMP, one for the IMW logic board. Right, same as the C.Itoh 8410 and NEC 8023A. I owned one of the wide carriage IMW I's but hardly used the wide part. But I had to have one cause it was neat.
The "engine" was built in two widths, but it was essentially the same cast metal. Apple chose C. Itoh dot matrix printer because of its ruggedness and reliability. The only difference between the C. Itoh 8510 and the Apple DMP is the plastic case and the ROM. The C. Itoh mechanism was sold by many "manufacturers", such as NEC and DEC, and was also sold in the 1980s as the "Prowriter". As I've mentioned here before, about once a year I happen to hear a dot matrix printer in an office and, when I look under the counter, it's a C. Itoh mechanism! It's the printer that won't die. ;-) -michael New, faster SUDOKU v2.0 solver for Apple II's! Home page: http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/ "The wastebasket is our most important design tool--and it's seriously underused."