Where have all the Selectrics gone?

From: Tony Duell <ard_at_p850ug1.demon.co.uk>
Date: Mon Jun 2 16:25:00 2003

> --- Tony Duell <ard_at_p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> > This reminds me,...
> >
> > Somewhere I have an electronic tyewriter, It's portable, battery operated
> > (!), and has a Centroinics port on the side so you can use it as a
> > printer.
>
> I think the plotter mechanism for the workslate was also battery powered.
>
> > The mechanism? A wide-carriage (8" or so) version of that little
> > ballpoint pen plotter that we discussed recently, you know the
> > CBM1520/CGP115/etc one).
>
> Nice.

Well, the print quality wasn't as good as a 'real' typewriter, on the
other hand this thing is pretty light, and IIRC there's a mode for
drawing pie charts, etc (!) which are not easy to draw on a normal
typewriter.

It's an interesting toy, I guess. But I'll stick to my real, mechanical,
manual typewriter for filling in forms, and the laserprinter for word
processing :-)

>
> > One odd pen i have for it once contained
> > white-out type correction fluid and and could be used to erase characters
> > from the output (!).
>
> Wow! That'd be a cool pen to have. You could put colored paper in the

I'm pretty sure it's long since dead, and I have no idea where you'd get
a replacement. IIRC, there were 2 tubes of pens that came with the unit
-- one had the conventional black, blue, green, red ones, and the other
had the correction pen and 3 others (possibly a special one to write over
the correction fluid?)

The dust cover for this unit had clips inside to hold 2 tubes of pens, I
think.

Of course I've opeened it up. I think almost all the work is done by a 64
pin 6803-type microcontroller. There are also some power driver circuits
for the stepper motors, etc. Not much else inside.

> mechanism and use it for "white" (if it didn't flake off).

I don't think it was as fine a tip as the normal pens.

-tony
Received on Mon Jun 02 2003 - 16:25:00 BST