[HECnet] Which is THE dec printer?

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2014-01-15 13:13, Cory Smelosky wrote:
On Wed, 15 Jan 2014, Johnny Billquist wrote:

On 2014-01-15 10:20, Cory Smelosky wrote:
On Wed, 15 Jan 2014, Dave McGuire wrote:

On 01/15/2014 09:58 AM, Daniel Soderstrom wrote:
The chances of a printer turning up in Perth, WA are zip. If I had to
pay money for one "desert island" DEC printer. What would it be?

I'm not sure it'd be fair to designate one printer out of so many
different models, with such different capabilities.

My opinion, though...If you're talking about an output-only device,
assuming for the minicomputer family, my personal favorite is the
LA180.
It has its faults (unidirectional printing comes to mind) but overall
it's a great printer.   My opinion of it is not objective because I had
one for years on my first PDP-11.

No receive-only LA120?! ;)

(Is that was the LA180 is?   I can't remember what the models number for
the receive-only LA120 was.)   I like my printers big. ;)

So you should really aim for the LP26 or LP27 then... You need to be
at least two people to even lift it off the ground.


Perfect! ;)

They are line printers. Which means they are large, heavy, fast, and very noisy. I have not seen any in the last 20 years now. I remember when we dragged an LP14 out of the computer room. Two people with shoulder straps, and we barely managed to lift it an inch off the floor while dragging it out.

I really like the line printers, but they are not for home use... But they work fine on a PDP-11 as well. You just need an LP11 card in the machine. (Or LPV11 if you're a Qbus person.)

	Johnny