Strange and Possibly Wonderful Cable

From: Fred Cisin <cisin_at_xenosoft.com>
Date: Sat Jan 5 19:43:31 2002

On Sat, 5 Jan 2002, Jeff Hellige wrote:
> I no longer have the pinouts for the various TRS-80/Tandy
> printer ports. I've got the pinouts for the 1000HX and the 2000, but
> that's it. The 26-1401 isn't keyed at all either so it'd be easy
> enough to plug it in upside down. The later shielded cables for the
> 1000-series have 'Top' embossed on the metal shield around the
> connector.

The model 1 expansion interface had every cable go down from the
connector, and had silly little covers for the openings to go over the
cables (I have a new unopened set of those for sale)
If you leave off the silly covers, then any of the cables could be
inverted. You could also connect the printer to the floppy port, etc.

> >difference that I remember was that RS configured all of their printers
> >for auto LF after CR, but that they were otherwise completely
> >interchangeable, and "standard Centronics port".
> The links to Tandy's own documentation suggests the need for
> the different cables depending on what printer type is used. Some of
> their later printers did have an option switch which did allow you to
> choose between Tandy and IBM modes, afaik. Maybe it was something as
> simple as the LF and CR being different. That's been enough of a
> difference to cause problems with text editors and such between
> systems in the past.

Absolutely!
The first time that I tried to share a printer between model ones, threes
and PCs (remember Quadram's big multi-input "Multifazer"? buffer? (FS)), I
had a choice between double spacing on the PC output, or "paper-saving
mode" on the TRS-80 output.

But did they actually try to deal with that through CABLING?!?
Received on Sat Jan 05 2002 - 19:43:31 GMT