>> Were they DOT MATRIX? I'll bet they're not big old noisy line printers
>>unless
>> they're sound covered and about 4 feet tall.
>
>Yes they were dot matrix. I always equated line printers with dot matrix
>printers. Is there a difference?
Just slightly :^) The line printers I'm most familiar with were about 6
feet wide, 3 feet deep, 5 or 6 feet high, in a sound proof enclosure, and
were impact printers.
IIRC the biggest I worked on was an impact printer with each character a
single link in a belt that made up a long loop. There were multiple
instances of the same character in the belt, and it whirled around real
fast, with a hammer behind it ramming it into the roll of inked fabric
(messy stuff). It could to single or multipart paper. The paper sat in
the bottom of the printer, and then the printer pulled it up and shot it
out the back into a stacker.
I somehow doubt it's possible for a dot matrix to even come close to the
speed of a good line printer.
Zane
| Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Adminstrator |
| healyzh_at_ix.netcom.com (primary) | Linux Enthusiast |
| healyzh_at_holonet.net (alternate) | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
| For Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, |
| see
http://www.dragonfire.net/~healyzh/ |
| For the collecting of Classic Computers with info on them. |
| see
http://www.dragonfire.net/~healyzh/museum.html |
Received on Sun Apr 26 1998 - 13:00:11 BST