On Tue, 31 Aug 1999, Joe wrote:
> At 01:25 AM 8/31/99 -0500, Doug wrote:
> >Hi,
> >
> >I thought I'd break in amongst all the big-brained stuff about part
> >design and announce to the world that I've garbage-picked a Hewlett
> >Packard DraftMaster I (7595A).
> >
> >It went downhill really well, so I'm considering entering it in next
> >year's Soap Box Derby.
I hope you are kidding... B^}
<snippage...>
> >I used to work as a CAD operator at one of the big engineering firms in
> >downtown Montreal, so this is a cool find.
>
> Yes, they're NICE plotters. Unfortunately, everyone is throwing them out
> and replacing them with ink jets. I rescued two of them but couldn't
> even give them away.
Now that is sad... I have a few plotters in my collection, including a
7586B unit with the roll feed option. Now, granted they are no good for
printing wall sized 'photo-realistic' posters, (which is what the large
format inkjets at work seem to spend a lot of time doing) but for working
drawings and such they are just fine and (IMHO) a great deal more fun to
watch than the carriage on one of the 'PrintJet' units wandering back and
forth...
Great fun actually in demos driven off of an old version of AutoCAD set
for full 'Pen optimization'. Give it a large multi-layered drawing (the
starship Enterprise is a good one) and watch people stare it as the pen
runs all over the drawing area drawing apparently random line segments for
a good long time until it finally starts to resemble something
recognizable.
I always wondered just what their definition of 'optimization' really
was... B^}
-jim
---
jimw_at_computergarage.org
The Computer Garage - http://www.computergarage.org
Computer Garage Fax - (503) 646-0174
Received on Tue Aug 31 1999 - 16:47:00 BST