[rescue] Moth balls

[John Francini]

On 13 Jun 2008, at 9:08, Lionel Peterson wrote:

>> From: John Francini <francini at mac.com>
>> Date: 2008/06/13 Fri AM 08:50:37 EDT
>> To: The Rescue List <rescue at sunhelp.org>
>> Subject: Re: [rescue] Moth balls
>
>> George,
>>
>> If it has a paper-tape reader and punch, it's an ASR-33.
>>
>> If it doesn't, it's a KSR-33.
>
> Weren't there print-only versions? (Like you see in the movie  
> newsrooms)

You're right -- that's the RO-33.  And the Baudot versions were the  
ASR-32/KSR-32/RO-32.

I remember seeing them -- back in the 70s, many Holiday Inns had one  
behind the front desk.  It was used for recording phone calls made  
through the hotel's PBX, for billing to the room.

> I *think* the circuit to interface a 20 mA loop to a serial port is  
> quite trivial, and is probably available out on the web[0].
>
> A very nice interim step would be a dot matrix printer, say like an  
> Epson MX-80, or one of those nice 24 pin Panasonic impact  
> printers... Printer ribbons aren't too hard to find, and fan-fold  
> paper is still in ready supply.
>
> I keep thinking of putting a dot matrix printer on my SPARC server,  
> to log login requests - just the occasional grrrrrrrind to remind  
> me of where we came from...

For my purposes, historically speaking, something in the DECwriter  
family would be more memory-full: an LA36 DECwriter II, an LA120  
DECwriter III, or an LA180 DECprinter (an RO DECwriter)...

john