Old Printers

Today, I received the ImageWriter II, that I bought on eBay.  It arrived, well packed, with no cables or cords as it was described online.

I dug out a power cord that would fit it and plugged it in. It fired right up.  I put in a single sheet of paper and tried a self test.  The print head did the whole back and forth thing and the paper did not move.  It didn’t print either.  I checked the ribbon and figured it was just dry.  I had a “new” ribbon so I put that in.  While I was at it, I repositioned the paper and closed it up.  Then I tried the self test again.  Print, print, print.  The printer went through all the motions of printing, the head went from side to side and you could hear the printer printing.  The paper advanced like it should but, (You ever notice there always a but?)  the print was barely visible.  The “new” ribbon was apparently dry also.

So what I have, is a mechanically sound printer that won’t print until I get a ribbon that works.  Oh, and of course the serial cable for the Apple //c.

I am looking forward to being able to print from either of my Apple //’s or my Mac’s, once everything it up and running.

The last stumbling block in all this will be paper.  The printer will use single pages if you hand feed them but if you want to print more than a couple of pages you’re better off with old style computer paper.  It was known by various names such as continuous forms, tractor feed or pin feed.