Update December 2024: It's been 1.5 years, and it still works! th-cam.com/video/yJ1ZC51yuzA/w-d-xo.html One thing I forgot to mention in the video is that if you're going to try this yourself, you should pick better solenoids. The ones I uses are just barely powerful enough for the job, and if you power one of them for any longer than a few seconds, it will heat up and melt. Even if not driven to melting, the increased temperature changes the coil resistance, which changes the pull force, which throws off the timing. I feel pretty lucky that I was able to get it working as well as I did. Also recommend going for 24 or 48V solenoids - the power supply might be less common but they should get you the same power for 1/2 or 1/4 the current.
I didn't watch the whole video, but I wonder, did it occur to you that you could use the corrective ribbon to erase characters? I wonder if you could get visual programs like vi to work this way (albeit extremely slowly!)
@@joshwilliams7692 No corrective ribbon on this model. Wish I had that version but you can't be picky about trash. Also, there is (as far as I know) no way to move up a line of text. I do have a cheap (and broken) electric daisy wheel typewriter I could try with this, maybe in a future video, but it certainly loses style points vs a Selectric.
@@alnwlsn Yeah, there's no key to go up a line, but it may be possible to reverse the direction of the return key. I'm not sure. I guess it depends on how it's implemented. And yeah, I agree. The daisy wheel one wouldn't be as cool, although it would be a cool project if it allows you to do visual programs. It would be hilarious to see it wear through the paper eventually.
At 16:49 you mentioned that what you "should have done was have another sensor on the mechanism to detect when it's a good time to activate things". Are you thinking of sensors for the three `delay2()` calls in typewriter-firmware.ino:balled() that you showed on the screen? (1. Cycle-bail has tripped, 2. Latch interposers are in position, 3. Latch interposers are clear.) Or, were you also thinking of sensors for all the other waits in the code like, for SHIFT and SPACE? How many different sensors would have been required to remove all the hand-tuned delays?
@@BenInSeattle I think what I meant here was that properly sensing the mechanism would allow for reduced activation of the cycle bail start/stop clutch. In my research into the I/O selectric. this is the part that would wear out. Usually, the clutch will disengage and wait for you to press the next key. But if you keep the cycle bail pulled, the clutch stays engaged and it keep going onto the next character. This also allows for the absolute fastest print speed, apparently at about 134.5 baud. Doing this by timing alone is difficult. Too much time and the clutch will re-close between each character. Too little, and the print mechanism will fall behind of the electronics, and you might miss a character. It probably would be more effective to sense the position of the main shaft that rotates 1/character and eliminate the guesswork. Also, if you sense the position with a rotary encoder or something, you can convert all your delay2() into waiting for a certain angle, but that's probably more precision that you need. The main thing is that using only timing like I was, and trying to stop the clutch from re-opening on each character, the electronics actually have no reference as to where the mechanism is in the cycle and you have to just have faith that is is still synced up after printing a long string of characters.
You could give a bunch of kids calculators and tell them to do the math that shows on one screen and type the answer on the other screen and hook them all to a big I/O and Linux would run on it.
@@Soundpost-f2l i saved my old pc like that long time ago. It was an intel celeron on 478 socket, a prescott family if I’m remember right. Xp was so slow and i installed Ubuntu 8 or 9. Good old days.
Wow! Your visual explanation of the Selectric is the best around. Brilliant. You made a Selectric IO all by yourself, self contained, without hurting the machine a bit. Brilliant! Your demos are brilliant too. Impressive!
This was everybody's dream machine in 1976. I even had a professor who wanted my thesis to be printed by real typewriter and not by a computer, because that would be cheating. Luckily I managed to gain access to fancy Olivetti terminal, which had reasonably typewriterish font.
imagine justputting a shit ton of tensor cores and VRAM into a typewriter, running an LLM on it, and just airdropping it in the 1950s. A typewriter that talks back to you would be fucking insane
Insanely awesome work! I have a Selectric Composer I really want to modify into a data terminal for the Litton minicomputer, and this will be an awesome guide for the inevitable hurdles I'll have to overcome.
I remember walking into an office/computer lab and the noise was just insane. The hard moulded plastic keyboards clacking away, the typewriters, the dot matrix printers. We have it good today!
Holy shit, I knew that this was possible in theory - but WOW, it's so cool to see an electromechanical system hooked up to a selectric to ALLOW it to connect to a computer!!
That discarded ribbon at the end reminded me of a _Columbo_ episode in which the scruffy raincoat-clad detective solved the murder case by reading what the suspect (played by Dick van Dyke, if my memory serves) had typed on the day of the murder. That's an ingeniously complex mechanism. I always wanted one of those typewriters but never owned one. I did buy a daisywheel printer as a high quality alternative to my dot-matrix printer and connected it to my 8-bit microcomputer, back in the '80s. The print quality was on a par with that of a Selectric and the print wheels are similarly versatile but it only needed a single stepper motor to position the correct petal under the solenoid-operated hammer, plus another for the carriage plus another for the platen. All things considered, the print mechanism seemed much simpler than that of the Selectric but, then again, it lacked a keyboard, which is where a lot of the Selectric's complexity seems to be centred. I don't know if my printer was quite as fast as yours but it was similarly noisy. I even wrote a printer driver for it that prompted me to change the wheel for an italic version, and back again, and again, and... when printing word processor documents.
I did a similar conversion waaaay back in 1978 (on a Selectric I, manufactured in 1969.) I used solenoids cannibalized from 12 volt relays, mounted them on an aluminum bar, and soldered loops of 1 mm copper wire to the relays' anchors, to lift the latches in the Selectric. A 2708 EEPROM translated the ASCII print codes from my TRS-80 computer to the 7-bit code for the solenoids. A few more solenoids for space, CR and so on. I did have to cut two openings in the bottom cover, though... Opto-feedback from the Selectric to my interface enabled me to print at a whopping 15.5 cps, the rotational speed of the Selectric main spindle! Best print quality I ever had (until the Apple LaserWriter I purchased almost 10 years later...)
Before I started my career as a network engineer back in 1993, I worked for an office machine business in Tulsa, OK. My position included the annual cleanings for all IBM Selectric, Selectric II's and IIIs. I would disassemble the outer shell assembly and place the unit into a solvent bath to soak for an hour, then it was a toothbrush scrubbing in every nook and cranny then a final rinse and blow out with the air compressor. I loved that part of my job because it had Zen to it. And alot of fumes from the solvents helped that out too. It would have never occurred to me that this could be done, but I see how you did it now and I am blown away. Cool Video.
27:40 With the noise of this typewriter, the expression "speaking like a machine gun" finds its original and real meaning. Very good work. Thank you for making us discover the computer of the origins before the terminals with screens.
I found a Selectric II in a thrift shop and almost bought it, but realized that I'd never be able to have it serviced. At 27:45, we are watching the typewriter echo what is being spoken. My first reaction was Teri Garr, playing Roberta Lincoln in Star Trek's 'Assignment:Earth' when she is confronted with the typewriter taking dictation. "It's typing everything I'm saying!" Looks like life imitating art. The author deprecates his own work by saying that it's not very useful, but I think it has one practical use: Envelopes. Well done! Kudos. The combination of mechanical and electrical engineering is impressive.
Very impressive DIY electromechanical conversion. I was a service technician on those machines back in the day. Those phantom dashes, or underscores you are getting are from the cycle clutch failing to latch and taking an extra cycle. There was a special tool called a "Hooverometer" that was used to make the measure the precise setting of the cycle clutch latch height.
Dude you are my hero. I'm 65 and my first ever time in front of a computer involved a time-share APL system with a Selectric featuring the APL typing ball. You absolutely have to get an APL ball :)
Fascinating. I'm 54 and my dad used to work at IBM as an accountant, so as a child I got to see those first huge computers that took up a whole wall, the ones that used punch cards to interface with them, you know? Years after I also remember when he had a terminal at his office that was connected to the main computer, I guess, I was too young to understand. Him and his work mates used to refer to their terminals as "my machine" , as in "send the info to my machine" lol , crazy stuff. It was kind of a typewriter connected to a black and green text screen. Years after he did have a laptop to do part of his work on, which he still refered to as "my machine" lol Of course this meant my brother and I had computing lessons very young, at like 13 or 14 (around 1983), starting with Cobol, Logo and Basic. Also in those years we would work there in the summers doing stock inventory, which meant going through trays of boxes with replacement parts and counting the parts to confirm what the hand written card accounted for, like these tiny black grease covered springs which would have like "134" on the card, which meant you had to count the tiny springs and confirm there were 134 of them, or not. lol Not weird that my brother and I both ended up working in technology, him in Usability and me in web design and development. There was another summer job I never got to do (I think they gave it to older kids) which was "scrapping" - I think it was called - which was taking a sledgehammer and trashing the sht out of unsold computer screens and other stuff!! Everyone wanted to get to do that! lol Good memories. Fun video! Cheers from Chile.
I love Selectrics and this is one totally awesome project 😁 After repairs your machine seems to run very well, but I noticed the print looks like you have the ball on "carbon copy" mode, ie. hitting the platen with too much force. You can adjust this setting easily from the shift lever found right next to the ball (the one with the red knob on it). Hope this helps 😊
I wish your video had come out 45 years ago. Back then I wondered how the Selectric my dad had on loan from the office worked, and took it apart while my parents were away from the house. Halfway in I decided this was more complex than I could manage, and started to re-assemble the thing. But I failed also at that. So I had to confess my deeds to dad, and he had to go to the office maintenance people who did manage to put it back together. I was terribly ashamed, but I am sure those men had a good laugh!
When I was a kid, my grandma had a Selectric on her desk. It sat directly in front of a wide window that overlooked the miles of waving hills of wheat fields at the old farm house. I would sit for what seemed like hours and type out goofy kid stories on it, occasionally gazing out the window. The thing about the Selectric was that it felt good to type on. The response of the keys and the sureness with which that big ball of text struck that page. It was just plain fun and tactily rewarding to type on it.
Amazing engineering and creativity! Nice work. I’d like to imagine your Selectric sits nearby and hums to life once in a while to type out every comment you get on this video :)
Cool work! My dad got hold of a Selectric airline terminal around 1977 but the airlines had a special ball that was unique and not compatible with the typewriter version. He disassembled the thing to switch around the interposer bars and make it work with standard Selectric balls. It was driven by a "Kim-1" early 6502 based SBC similar in function to a first-gen Commodore PET. We had that for a while as he built his own text processor for the PET "Textpro" it was never a commercial product but was useful for its time. A few years later, the Daisy Wheel printers came out and crushed everything (Diablo and DTC linear motor printers). I think the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA has some paper/info on those. They likely have a Selectric and/or IBM Memory Writer (the thing you talked about) in house. [PS: you could probably use a copy of the original text-based "Smiley Dictionary" which predates "Emoticons" ].
I used to typeset a 32-page magazine, once a month, on an IBM Composer, which was the evolved version of the Selectric which had proportionally spaced fonts. And you could make it create justified columns if you typed each line TWICE (without any errors!) so that the mechanism added up all the word spaces (mechanically!) the first time through, and then told you how to set two dials which would distribute extra type-head motion to add a little bit to each space in the line, thus creating a straight right-hand edge to the column. This of course was a nightmare, but there were no affordable substitutes in those days. I rented an IBM Composer for one week out of each month, to do the typesetting. Then I discovered a printing company which had a very limited IBM computer that saved text on magnetic tape, and played it back through an IBM Composer. State of the art in 1969!! So if you can find an IBM Composer, it will have those solenoids already installed in it. Thanks for a wonderful video!
It's nice to see a modern Selectric conversion. Things have come a long way from the days of the TV Typewriter Cookbook. As for the input glitch, that appears to be the minus/hyphen, which according to the Russian spy bug chart is the 00000 code. So probably there's a glitch in detecting when a key is pressed. Maybe after coming back into user mode, enough stuff is still bouncing around to trip your "key pressed" sensor when all the bars are at zero. The speech-to-text reminds me of that Star Trek episode where Gary Seven hired Teri Garr as a secretary, and freaked her out with a voice recognizing typewriter. So now you just need a custom ball with the < and > and other characters to show up properly instead of the overstrikes.
Your voice gives "Joe Pera Talks You to Sleep" vibes! Don't worry, this did NOT talk me to sleep LOL. Despite that I would never do this, nor did I search for it, I watched/listened to the end. Congrats on structuring this video in a way that held my attention on a subject and process that I technically didn't need to know, nor did I necessarily understand entirely, yet remained fully immersed and fascinated while following the overview! 😄
Excellent video! Exactly the information I was searching for. I have had the idea to acquire and convert an IBM Selectric II for the past 20 years, and now I found a working one for sale.
Amazing project and really nice job on those custom parts! A big undertaking. Selectrics love being used; if left inactive too long, the oil dries out and the action gets sticky. Sometimes just exercising all the keys loosens things up, but often you have to go in and loosen things up with light oil. I've been able to get stuck machines going again with a little wd40, though that's frowned upon by the old ibm techs. There's several service manuals, some focus on adjustments/tuning/parts -- your lift tape mechanism seems it might need a small adjustment, as some characters are hitting the top edge of the tape, causing partial printing.
Thank you this is so enjoyable to watch. I was around in 1977 when people were offering to convert a "golf ball" to a printer. It was expensive and took months. The demand for a document indistinguishable from the "real thing" is what drove this.
Absolutely gorgeous! I am so jealous that you were able to do this project!!! I had a selectric when I was younger that I got for like $5 at a neighbors garage sale hehe... Anyway, Great video! You're super smart!
Wow. Thus gives me so much joy. A couple years ago I came across a selectric and planned to do a similar thing. But I took one look under the hood, read the repair manual and tapped out. Respect!
When i was little, I was given an Olivetti A5 accounting computer that used mag stripe cards for program and data storage and used the Selectric mechanism to display it's output. I played with it then tore it apart for fun I kept just the stand (later used for an audio console) and the keyboard which I hardwired to my Timex/Sinclair 1000 in place of it's tiny, awful, membrane keyboard. I scissor cut the key legends out of a magazine and scotch taped them over the Olivetti keys. My point is, The Olivetti would probably have been a good candidate for your project but with less electromechanical shenanigans to enjoy. Amazing work you did!!
Pretty cool. Avis Rent a Car was the first RAC company to computerize first reservations, then counter operations. The first computer was, naturally, a modified IBM Selectric. I started with the company in 1984 when they were already on the 3rd generation system, with standard IBM 3270 terminals. In 1986 I transferred to a licensee operation in Binghamton, NY, which had no computer. On a cold rainy day in April, I drove across half of NY to Jamestown to pick up an old Wizard I system, which consisted of the gray cabinet, the Selectric, the logic (computer & modem) unit and the cabling that connected them all. It was great to be connected to the world again. Sadly, Avis stopped supporting the older units within a few months, and we returned to analog operations.
Amazing, top work! I used to repair typewriters in the 1980s. Thankfully there were not many of these around in the UK, likely due to their cost. I do recall they were so very complex (as verified by your great video) and i preferred to repair a manual or simpler electric typewriter. Thanks for your work and sharing.
Man this is the coolest. I know this is an odd request, If you had a standard speed video maybe 10-20 minutes long of just the sound of the machine running, typing away, I'd absolutely love that.
@@alnwlsn ah sick, I think it's like the most soothing sound. I have a selectric III too, but not something that can type for a long time at a consistent speed. I really want to do what you did to my machine with whatever tweaks needed for my model. I wish I could find a selectric composer and that other model with solid state memory, memory writer or something, they're so cool.
Awesome work, best and most professional customization I've seen. Love the 3D printed mounts for the solenoids etc and your method of triggering the Operational Interposers is pure gold. You made it all seem so simple (which it is of course). The Selectric is truly a symphony in mechanical engineering.
Back in the day, I was given two of IBM Selectric BCD typewriters from a bank and I interfaced them with my S100, Z80, CP/M 2.2 computer. I had to design and build my own interface and write my code to translate ASCII to EBCDIC. Both worked flawlessly until I on-sold them. Those were the days ! ! !
Your understanding of mechanics and mechanical engineering on top of programming for fun and combining systems and devices is fabulous stuff. "I didn't read the manual" lol! Bet you were busy reading schematics. The slow motion of the typing sphere is satisfyingly funny to me. Very impressive project!
This really makes me see how the whiffletree digital to analog converter is actually used, it really never made sense before but this really shows how to use it now!
BTW -- this is very inpressive, you just made me want to buy one and try to reproduce this project, it is very inspirational to me to see lecagy tech working and comunicationg with fairly modern tech :O
Masterpiece is an appropriate description. My parents had a brand new one of these in our house. My mom did some secretarial work and had fairly nice old mechanical typewriter but it was very old and I learned to type on that. But in the sixties everyone was going electric and of course IBM saw a golden opportunity to rule the office typewriter world. So they designed and built the mac daddy of all electric typewriters. For me as a young teenage boy with a fascination for all things mechanical it was love at first sight. My parents might have been wary of letting me use it but the thing was built like a tank and therefore I was pretty sure it was kid proof. And it was a joy to type on. Wish I still had that unit.
I'm incredibly intrigued and completely overwhelmed at the same time. WOW! I learned to type on these things in 1982 (an original Selectric) and finished with my last test at 55 words per minute. Those iconic typewriters make a noise that's deep in my soul now. I *was* thinking about trying something like this, but see it's a HUGE undertaking. While I probably won't now, you opened up the case and highlighted dozens of things I didn't know. Maybe finding an old ProWriter is the way to go..... Thanks alnwlsn!
I was actually thinking about some of these typewriters having serial ports to support some type of dumb terminal. Interesting you made one! Great job!
In the early 80's, a couple of high school friends and myself somehow bought a few discarded Sylvania (?) s electric machines that were already modified. They were much larger than your model and included a small tape unit that could record and playback a small document. There were 4 or 5 packed circuit boards inside, all RTL logic. One of us was mechanically gifted and he got the typewriter mechanisms to work again somehow. We think they were intentionally damaged prior to being scrapped, something that I somehow confirmed by calling a local office and hearing something along the lines of yes, we did that to avoid giving any support. We had a printed copy of the service manual and got all 3 working eventually. Mine was hooked up to my TRS-80 via a custom expansion interface. Good times.. Wish I still had it.
'Whiffletree' , what a great word. I looked it up in the dictionary . 'A crossbar that is attached to the traces of a draft horse and to the vehicle or implement that the horse is pulling.'
It's amazing that you were able to get some old electromechanical typewriter to be able to handle the entire Linux OS! You're a genius to fit 4gb into that thing
Way cool, dude. brings back memories. However, one of the memories it brings back is the university having an IBM CE on-site full time just to maintain its fleet of heavily-used 2741s. Please avoid running your Selectric at high speed for extended periods. It will almost certainly make you unhappy/ Thanks for the fun.
I’m with you! In 2000, I wanted an IBM selectric teletype. They did make them. But, I’d then learned they were a whole desk! I did buy the tool to tune them, a dedicated briefcase, but had to be practical and settled for a later compact typewriter/printer with a daisy wheel.
When business letters were works of art on quality paper with touches like colored ink Selectric was king. The TEXTURE of these letters is very different than what is produced today on most printer paper. The world doesn't need that era back but it was interesting. You now have a VERY NICE high end Teletype.
The first computer I used was an IBM 1130 with a selectric console as its primary input device. I learned C on a teletype 33 with a built in 300 bps modem. The way they handled passwords, is the host would type over the input field multiple times to obliterate the field, then allow the password to be entered.
Awesome project! I remember using a 2741 terminal around 1974 connected to an APL\360 system via acoustic coupler. It had a sound that you never forget and you've reproduced it very well! What would be cool is to get an APL typeball and then use it with the original APL\360 (available open source now) running under MVS emulator that runs on Linux. I have it running on my Linux box, but only with an IBM keyboard with APL keycaps.
Very cool, worked on these for 15+ years, never did have to take apart the keyboard like that as they were that reliable. Yeah that was an (EXP return) to return part way back and type over and later on with correcting units you could use the correction feature. The others that followed using the exact same plans through a legal suit really never got them to work as good as IBM did.
The tele-type I worked with had similar behaviour to yours: every key you type is echo-ed by the printer itself, not by the computer they talked to. Back in the day, shell programs had an option to disable echo to support these tele-types. UNIX shells still have it.
The reason I clicked on and now subscribed to your channel is my sentimental passion for APL and the IBM 2741. With the ability of converting a IBM Selectric typewriter into a printer, and the 3D printing of typeballs (like the APL font), the real possibility exists that the IBM 2741 could be reverse engineered in 2024. I still occasionally use APL\360 via Hercules, but what a rush it would be to do it as in 1973!
As someone who did that in 1973, it *was* a bit of a rush after using punched cards, especially when it was the only interactive computing available. But the pounding of the golf ball flattened the thrill after a while, and we all lusted after the CRT terminals that were becoming available. The rush pretty much died when I started using CP/M and DOS, with languges like C and PL/I that made it feasible to write programs that you could pass along to strangers without fearing revenge 😀 I've been on Linux for over 20 years now, and haven't even bothered to try the free APL.
In 1990 I owned an IBM XT compatible computer. It had 640 K and a 50MG hard drive. I bought it to my office to handle basic correspondence. I used a daisy wheel printer, which I bought from Army Surplus for $7, and use it for 2 full years. The printer was slow, but the print quality was great.
Love this project! You realized my dream and desires! This typewriter was a marvel of a special time. Btw, I’m a mech Eng. and did work at a metal stamping company. That process is critical to making all those parts. Suggestion: get a custom ball made. You can get a 3d printed one made by PCBWAY with powder stintering tech.
This is so cool. I have one of those late electronic typewriters from the early eighties that I've thought about trying something similar with. It's much simpler than a Selectric, of course. It runs on an Intel 8051 CPU, but that's about as much as I know, because I can't find documentation for it anywhere.
I've done one of those too! It was one of my first Arduino projects from way back. Even though I eventually broke it, it taught me a good deal about electronics and microcontrollers.
In mid-1970s, a surplus company was selling IBM Selectric mechanisms for printer/teletype conversion. As I remember - and cancelled contract and numerous surplus assemblies with electronics.
I've got a Selectric that I found in a goodwill down here in FL. It is just Sitting. This is exactly what I've wondered if it could do, and it is exactly what I want to do with it. It might already be converted. I have no clue. And I am not set quite up yet to do any kind of work on it.
Update December 2024: It's been 1.5 years, and it still works! th-cam.com/video/yJ1ZC51yuzA/w-d-xo.html
One thing I forgot to mention in the video is that if you're going to try this yourself, you should pick better solenoids. The ones I uses are just barely powerful enough for the job, and if you power one of them for any longer than a few seconds, it will heat up and melt. Even if not driven to melting, the increased temperature changes the coil resistance, which changes the pull force, which throws off the timing. I feel pretty lucky that I was able to get it working as well as I did.
Also recommend going for 24 or 48V solenoids - the power supply might be less common but they should get you the same power for 1/2 or 1/4 the current.
I didn't watch the whole video, but I wonder, did it occur to you that you could use the corrective ribbon to erase characters? I wonder if you could get visual programs like vi to work this way (albeit extremely slowly!)
@@joshwilliams7692 No corrective ribbon on this model. Wish I had that version but you can't be picky about trash. Also, there is (as far as I know) no way to move up a line of text. I do have a cheap (and broken) electric daisy wheel typewriter I could try with this, maybe in a future video, but it certainly loses style points vs a Selectric.
@@alnwlsn Yeah, there's no key to go up a line, but it may be possible to reverse the direction of the return key. I'm not sure. I guess it depends on how it's implemented. And yeah, I agree. The daisy wheel one wouldn't be as cool, although it would be a cool project if it allows you to do visual programs. It would be hilarious to see it wear through the paper eventually.
At 16:49 you mentioned that what you "should have done was have another sensor on the mechanism to detect when it's a good time to activate things". Are you thinking of sensors for the three `delay2()` calls in typewriter-firmware.ino:balled() that you showed on the screen? (1. Cycle-bail has tripped, 2. Latch interposers are in position, 3. Latch interposers are clear.) Or, were you also thinking of sensors for all the other waits in the code like, for SHIFT and SPACE? How many different sensors would have been required to remove all the hand-tuned delays?
@@BenInSeattle I think what I meant here was that properly sensing the mechanism would allow for reduced activation of the cycle bail start/stop clutch. In my research into the I/O selectric. this is the part that would wear out. Usually, the clutch will disengage and wait for you to press the next key. But if you keep the cycle bail pulled, the clutch stays engaged and it keep going onto the next character. This also allows for the absolute fastest print speed, apparently at about 134.5 baud. Doing this by timing alone is difficult. Too much time and the clutch will re-close between each character. Too little, and the print mechanism will fall behind of the electronics, and you might miss a character. It probably would be more effective to sense the position of the main shaft that rotates 1/character and eliminate the guesswork.
Also, if you sense the position with a rotary encoder or something, you can convert all your delay2() into waiting for a certain angle, but that's probably more precision that you need. The main thing is that using only timing like I was, and trying to stop the clutch from re-opening on each character, the electronics actually have no reference as to where the mechanism is in the cycle and you have to just have faith that is is still synced up after printing a long string of characters.
Microsoft: Sorry, Windows 11 it’s not compatible with your 4 years old PC…
Meanwhile linux:
You could give a bunch of kids calculators and tell them to do the math that shows on one screen and type the answer on the other screen and hook them all to a big I/O and Linux would run on it.
@@Soundpost-f2l i saved my old pc like that long time ago. It was an intel celeron on 478 socket, a prescott family if I’m remember right. Xp was so slow and i installed Ubuntu 8 or 9. Good old days.
linux requirement: electricity (optional)
Exactly.
Is "incompatible with windows 11" supposed to be a bad thing?
Wow! Your visual explanation of the Selectric is the best around. Brilliant. You made a Selectric IO all by yourself, self contained, without hurting the machine a bit. Brilliant! Your demos are brilliant too. Impressive!
@chyrosran22 does a pretty good job too 😁
Indeed it is, all the details! That's gonna help me a lot in the Selectric recombobulation project.
I always wondered how it woks
Casually getting the legend himself to comment on your videos
@@noahisamathnerd I wouldn't be surprised if Dave Jones or Dave Plummeer showed up.
this is absolutely insane for the amount of cross-discipline skill required
You are a wonderful continuation of the "old nerds". They were a different breed of people.
hardware used to be so much cooler
This was everybody's dream machine in 1976. I even had a professor who wanted my thesis to be printed by real typewriter and not by a computer, because that would be cheating.
Luckily I managed to gain access to fancy Olivetti terminal, which had reasonably typewriterish font.
The engineering here is beyond impressive, almost godlike. This video deserves so much more views than this.
this is how things should be built. very sparse use of plastic
imagine justputting a shit ton of tensor cores and VRAM into a typewriter, running an LLM on it, and just airdropping it in the 1950s.
A typewriter that talks back to you would be fucking insane
I think you can run llama2 small model on a raspberry pi with a decent speed. I will try and report
Like that one episode in Star Trek TOS...
@@Sys-Edit0r-1995 Im pretty sure one of the forefathers of modern day LLM's wanted to make computers like the one from Star Trek lol.
Insanely awesome work! I have a Selectric Composer I really want to modify into a data terminal for the Litton minicomputer, and this will be an awesome guide for the inevitable hurdles I'll have to overcome.
Good luck David, I know you can do it!
I have a personal track record of installing Linux on a variety of computers, but I am totally humbled by this epic endeavor. You are a genius!
I remember walking into an office/computer lab and the noise was just insane. The hard moulded plastic keyboards clacking away, the typewriters, the dot matrix printers. We have it good today!
Holy shit, I knew that this was possible in theory - but WOW, it's so cool to see an electromechanical system hooked up to a selectric to ALLOW it to connect to a computer!!
That discarded ribbon at the end reminded me of a _Columbo_ episode in which the scruffy raincoat-clad detective solved the murder case by reading what the suspect (played by Dick van Dyke, if my memory serves) had typed on the day of the murder.
That's an ingeniously complex mechanism. I always wanted one of those typewriters but never owned one. I did buy a daisywheel printer as a high quality alternative to my dot-matrix printer and connected it to my 8-bit microcomputer, back in the '80s. The print quality was on a par with that of a Selectric and the print wheels are similarly versatile but it only needed a single stepper motor to position the correct petal under the solenoid-operated hammer, plus another for the carriage plus another for the platen. All things considered, the print mechanism seemed much simpler than that of the Selectric but, then again, it lacked a keyboard, which is where a lot of the Selectric's complexity seems to be centred. I don't know if my printer was quite as fast as yours but it was similarly noisy. I even wrote a printer driver for it that prompted me to change the wheel for an italic version, and back again, and again, and... when printing word processor documents.
Don't let him fool you with his charming smile. Dick Van Dyke has murdered before; mostly the cockney accent
I did a similar conversion waaaay back in 1978 (on a Selectric I, manufactured in 1969.) I used solenoids cannibalized from 12 volt relays, mounted them on an aluminum bar, and soldered loops of 1 mm copper wire to the relays' anchors, to lift the latches in the Selectric. A 2708 EEPROM translated the ASCII print codes from my TRS-80 computer to the 7-bit code for the solenoids. A few more solenoids for space, CR and so on. I did have to cut two openings in the bottom cover, though... Opto-feedback from the Selectric to my interface enabled me to print at a whopping 15.5 cps, the rotational speed of the Selectric main spindle! Best print quality I ever had (until the Apple LaserWriter I purchased almost 10 years later...)
Before I started my career as a network engineer back in 1993, I worked for an office machine business in Tulsa, OK. My position included the annual cleanings for all IBM Selectric, Selectric II's and IIIs. I would disassemble the outer shell assembly and place the unit into a solvent bath to soak for an hour, then it was a toothbrush scrubbing in every nook and cranny then a final rinse and blow out with the air compressor. I loved that part of my job because it had Zen to it. And alot of fumes from the solvents helped that out too. It would have never occurred to me that this could be done, but I see how you did it now and I am blown away. Cool Video.
By the power vested in me, I grant you the title of King of the Nerds for one month. Absolutely fantastic project and video. Subscribed.
27:40 With the noise of this typewriter, the expression "speaking like a machine gun" finds its original and real meaning. Very good work. Thank you for making us discover the computer of the origins before the terminals with screens.
I found a Selectric II in a thrift shop and almost bought it, but realized that I'd never be able to have it serviced.
At 27:45, we are watching the typewriter echo what is being spoken. My first reaction was Teri Garr, playing Roberta Lincoln in Star Trek's 'Assignment:Earth' when she is confronted with the typewriter taking dictation. "It's typing everything I'm saying!" Looks like life imitating art.
The author deprecates his own work by saying that it's not very useful, but I think it has one practical use: Envelopes.
Well done! Kudos. The combination of mechanical and electrical engineering is impressive.
Very impressive DIY electromechanical conversion. I was a service technician on those machines back in the day. Those phantom dashes, or underscores you are getting are from the cycle clutch failing to latch and taking an extra cycle. There was a special tool called a "Hooverometer" that was used to make the measure the precise setting of the cycle clutch latch height.
35:31 It was so sad when you typed exit and no $ prompt appeared. Never before have I gotten emotional exiting a linux shell xD. Awesome project, man!
Dude you are my hero. I'm 65 and my first ever time in front of a computer involved a time-share APL system with a Selectric featuring the APL typing ball. You absolutely have to get an APL ball :)
Fascinating. I'm 54 and my dad used to work at IBM as an accountant, so as a child I got to see those first huge computers that took up a whole wall, the ones that used punch cards to interface with them, you know? Years after I also remember when he had a terminal at his office that was connected to the main computer, I guess, I was too young to understand. Him and his work mates used to refer to their terminals as "my machine" , as in "send the info to my machine" lol , crazy stuff. It was kind of a typewriter connected to a black and green text screen. Years after he did have a laptop to do part of his work on, which he still refered to as "my machine" lol
Of course this meant my brother and I had computing lessons very young, at like 13 or 14 (around 1983), starting with Cobol, Logo and Basic.
Also in those years we would work there in the summers doing stock inventory, which meant going through trays of boxes with replacement parts and counting the parts to confirm what the hand written card accounted for, like these tiny black grease covered springs which would have like "134" on the card, which meant you had to count the tiny springs and confirm there were 134 of them, or not. lol
Not weird that my brother and I both ended up working in technology, him in Usability and me in web design and development. There was another summer job I never got to do (I think they gave it to older kids) which was "scrapping" - I think it was called - which was taking a sledgehammer and trashing the sht out of unsold computer screens and other stuff!! Everyone wanted to get to do that! lol Good memories.
Fun video! Cheers from Chile.
I love Selectrics and this is one totally awesome project 😁
After repairs your machine seems to run very well, but I noticed the print looks like you have the ball on "carbon copy" mode, ie. hitting the platen with too much force.
You can adjust this setting easily from the shift lever found right next to the ball (the one with the red knob on it). Hope this helps 😊
One of the best channels in this genre on TH-cam, just wait until the algorithm picks this up.
I wish your video had come out 45 years ago. Back then I wondered how the Selectric my dad had on loan from the office worked, and took it apart while my parents were away from the house. Halfway in I decided this was more complex than I could manage, and started to re-assemble the thing. But I failed also at that. So I had to confess my deeds to dad, and he had to go to the office maintenance people who did manage to put it back together. I was terribly ashamed, but I am sure those men had a good laugh!
When I was a kid, my grandma had a Selectric on her desk. It sat directly in front of a wide window that overlooked the miles of waving hills of wheat fields at the old farm house. I would sit for what seemed like hours and type out goofy kid stories on it, occasionally gazing out the window. The thing about the Selectric was that it felt good to type on. The response of the keys and the sureness with which that big ball of text struck that page. It was just plain fun and tactily rewarding to type on it.
Amazing engineering and creativity! Nice work. I’d like to imagine your Selectric sits nearby and hums to life once in a while to type out every comment you get on this video :)
Cool work! My dad got hold of a Selectric airline terminal around 1977 but the airlines had a special ball that was unique and not compatible with the typewriter version. He disassembled the thing to switch around the interposer bars and make it work with standard Selectric balls. It was driven by a "Kim-1" early 6502 based SBC similar in function to a first-gen Commodore PET. We had that for a while as he built his own text processor for the PET "Textpro" it was never a commercial product but was useful for its time. A few years later, the Daisy Wheel printers came out and crushed everything (Diablo and DTC linear motor printers). I think the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA has some paper/info on those. They likely have a Selectric and/or IBM Memory Writer (the thing you talked about) in house. [PS: you could probably use a copy of the original text-based "Smiley Dictionary" which predates "Emoticons" ].
I used to typeset a 32-page magazine, once a month, on an IBM Composer, which was the evolved version of the Selectric which had proportionally spaced fonts. And you could make it create justified columns if you typed each line TWICE (without any errors!) so that the mechanism added up all the word spaces (mechanically!) the first time through, and then told you how to set two dials which would distribute extra type-head motion to add a little bit to each space in the line, thus creating a straight right-hand edge to the column.
This of course was a nightmare, but there were no affordable substitutes in those days. I rented an IBM Composer for one week out of each month, to do the typesetting.
Then I discovered a printing company which had a very limited IBM computer that saved text on magnetic tape, and played it back through an IBM Composer. State of the art in 1969!!
So if you can find an IBM Composer, it will have those solenoids already installed in it.
Thanks for a wonderful video!
My personal TH-cam best of the best awards finally find its winner, wow, what a project! Thank you for sharing!
Electromechanical stuff is so cool.
Thanks for showing how it works!
It's nice to see a modern Selectric conversion. Things have come a long way from the days of the TV Typewriter Cookbook.
As for the input glitch, that appears to be the minus/hyphen, which according to the Russian spy bug chart is the 00000 code. So probably there's a glitch in detecting when a key is pressed. Maybe after coming back into user mode, enough stuff is still bouncing around to trip your "key pressed" sensor when all the bars are at zero.
The speech-to-text reminds me of that Star Trek episode where Gary Seven hired Teri Garr as a secretary, and freaked her out with a voice recognizing typewriter.
So now you just need a custom ball with the < and > and other characters to show up properly instead of the overstrikes.
Your voice gives "Joe Pera Talks You to Sleep" vibes! Don't worry, this did NOT talk me to sleep LOL. Despite that I would never do this, nor did I search for it, I watched/listened to the end.
Congrats on structuring this video in a way that held my attention on a subject and process that I technically didn't need to know, nor did I necessarily understand entirely, yet remained fully immersed and fascinated while following the overview! 😄
I had this idea a few months ago. I will probably never get to it, but it's awesome that somebody else did. Well done!
"squeeze every last drop of performance out of it" ... that got me good.
Excellent video! Exactly the information I was searching for.
I have had the idea to acquire and convert an IBM Selectric II for the past 20 years, and now I found a working one for sale.
Amazing project and really nice job on those custom parts! A big undertaking.
Selectrics love being used; if left inactive too long, the oil dries out and the action gets sticky. Sometimes just exercising all the keys loosens things up, but often you have to go in and loosen things up with light oil. I've been able to get stuck machines going again with a little wd40, though that's frowned upon by the old ibm techs. There's several service manuals, some focus on adjustments/tuning/parts -- your lift tape mechanism seems it might need a small adjustment, as some characters are hitting the top edge of the tape, causing partial printing.
Thank you this is so enjoyable to watch. I was around in 1977 when people were offering to convert a "golf ball" to a printer. It was expensive and took months. The demand for a document indistinguishable from the "real thing" is what drove this.
Absolutely gorgeous! I am so jealous that you were able to do this project!!! I had a selectric when I was younger that I got for like $5 at a neighbors garage sale hehe... Anyway, Great video! You're super smart!
IBM also called the PC or laptop attached to a mainframe the support element.
So interposer instead of key key makes perfect sense!
12:20 IBM computer keyboards were the best! that feel, that typing sound.....!
Wow. Thus gives me so much joy. A couple years ago I came across a selectric and planned to do a similar thing. But I took one look under the hood, read the repair manual and tapped out. Respect!
When i was little, I was given an Olivetti A5 accounting computer that used mag stripe cards for program and data storage and used the Selectric mechanism to display it's output. I played with it then tore it apart for fun I kept just the stand (later used for an audio console) and the keyboard which I hardwired to my Timex/Sinclair 1000 in place of it's tiny, awful, membrane keyboard. I scissor cut the key legends out of a magazine and scotch taped them over the Olivetti keys. My point is, The Olivetti would probably have been a good candidate for your project but with less electromechanical shenanigans to enjoy. Amazing work you did!!
Pretty cool. Avis Rent a Car was the first RAC company to computerize first reservations, then counter operations. The first computer was, naturally, a modified IBM Selectric. I started with the company in 1984 when they were already on the 3rd generation system, with standard IBM 3270 terminals. In 1986 I transferred to a licensee operation in Binghamton, NY, which had no computer. On a cold rainy day in April, I drove across half of NY to Jamestown to pick up an old Wizard I system, which consisted of the gray cabinet, the Selectric, the logic (computer & modem) unit and the cabling that connected them all. It was great to be connected to the world again. Sadly, Avis stopped supporting the older units within a few months, and we returned to analog operations.
I have been looking for a keyboard that sounds and more importantly, feels like that to no avail... my dream keyboard... you are a genius
Amazing, top work! I used to repair typewriters in the 1980s. Thankfully there were not many of these around in the UK, likely due to their cost. I do recall they were so very complex (as verified by your great video) and i preferred to repair a manual or simpler electric typewriter. Thanks for your work and sharing.
Man this is the coolest. I know this is an odd request, If you had a standard speed video maybe 10-20 minutes long of just the sound of the machine running, typing away, I'd absolutely love that.
Sure, why not! I already have tons of footage of it - th-cam.com/video/dvlEfIUYEWk/w-d-xo.html
@@alnwlsn ah sick, I think it's like the most soothing sound. I have a selectric III too, but not something that can type for a long time at a consistent speed. I really want to do what you did to my machine with whatever tweaks needed for my model. I wish I could find a selectric composer and that other model with solid state memory, memory writer or something, they're so cool.
I want a Selectric partly because they’re cool and partly because I like the ability to choose a font.
As someone that dabbled with a Creed Teletype terminal back in the early 80's this is next-level insane and very nicely done.
Awesome work, best and most professional customization I've seen. Love the 3D printed mounts for the solenoids etc and your method of triggering the Operational Interposers is pure gold. You made it all seem so simple (which it is of course). The Selectric is truly a symphony in mechanical engineering.
Back in the day, I was given two of IBM Selectric BCD typewriters from a bank and I interfaced them with my S100, Z80, CP/M 2.2 computer.
I had to design and build my own interface and write my code to translate ASCII to EBCDIC.
Both worked flawlessly until I on-sold them.
Those were the days ! ! !
Your understanding of mechanics and mechanical engineering on top of programming for fun and combining systems and devices is fabulous stuff. "I didn't read the manual" lol! Bet you were busy reading schematics. The slow motion of the typing sphere is satisfyingly funny to me. Very impressive project!
so that's what they meant "Linux system requirements: a computer (optional)"
This is genius. Now I want to convert my Selectric, and hook it to Linux.
The other biggest advantage is that there was not moving carriage to knock over on your desk!
I love it!
This project could serve a very useful purpose: an IRC. I'd love to see all the IRC messages printed on an IBM Selectric
:-)
I'm sure there was a lot of sleepless nights during the product testing stage of this bad boy to get all the kinks worked out to make it so flawless.
This really makes me see how the whiffletree digital to analog converter is actually used, it really never made sense before but this really shows how to use it now!
BTW -- this is very inpressive, you just made me want to buy one and try to reproduce this project, it is very inspirational to me to see lecagy tech working and comunicationg with fairly modern tech :O
From time to time I see videos that make me feel aprticularly stupid and amazed at the exact same time.
This is one of them.
26:52 The print quality is gorgeous.
Masterpiece is an appropriate description. My parents had a brand new one of these in our house. My mom did some secretarial work and had fairly nice old mechanical typewriter but it was very old and I learned to type on that. But in the sixties everyone was going electric and of course IBM saw a golden opportunity to rule the office typewriter world. So they designed and built the mac daddy of all electric typewriters. For me as a young teenage boy with a fascination for all things mechanical it was love at first sight. My parents might have been wary of letting me use it but the thing was built like a tank and therefore I was pretty sure it was kid proof. And it was a joy to type on. Wish I still had that unit.
I'm incredibly intrigued and completely overwhelmed at the same time. WOW! I learned to type on these things in 1982 (an original Selectric) and finished with my last test at 55 words per minute. Those iconic typewriters make a noise that's deep in my soul now. I *was* thinking about trying something like this, but see it's a HUGE undertaking. While I probably won't now, you opened up the case and highlighted dozens of things I didn't know. Maybe finding an old ProWriter is the way to go..... Thanks alnwlsn!
Brilliant ! I impressed by the amount of knowledge and work you need in order to implement that kind of hack !
The operator console on the IBM 1130 minicomputer had a Selectric built-in as its output device.
I was actually thinking about some of these typewriters having serial ports to support some type of dumb terminal. Interesting you made one! Great job!
In the early 80's, a couple of high school friends and myself somehow bought a few discarded Sylvania (?) s electric machines that were already modified. They were much larger than your model and included a small tape unit that could record and playback a small document. There were 4 or 5 packed circuit boards inside, all RTL logic. One of us was mechanically gifted and he got the typewriter mechanisms to work again somehow. We think they were intentionally damaged prior to being scrapped, something that I somehow confirmed by calling a local office and hearing something along the lines of yes, we did that to avoid giving any support. We had a printed copy of the service manual and got all 3 working eventually. Mine was hooked up to my TRS-80 via a custom expansion interface. Good times.. Wish I still had it.
How about one of those old big mechanical calculators ("adding machines"), and enter, say, 1000000/1 .
one of the coolest sounds there is love IBM selectrics best typewriters ever made
'Whiffletree' , what a great word. I looked it up in the dictionary . 'A crossbar that is attached to the traces of a draft horse and to the vehicle or implement that the horse is pulling.'
Quality work buddy! The Selectrics always seemed daunting.
It's amazing that you were able to get some old electromechanical typewriter to be able to handle the entire Linux OS! You're a genius to fit 4gb into that thing
It's not running Linux at all, it's connected to the serial port of his Linux server which allows input and output.
Way cool, dude. brings back memories.
However, one of the memories it brings back is the university having an IBM CE on-site full time just to maintain its fleet of heavily-used 2741s. Please avoid running your Selectric at high speed for extended periods. It will almost certainly make you unhappy/
Thanks for the fun.
This is amazing 👏👏👏👏👏 I wish I had one at home. I just playing with `ed` recently and remembered to watch again this video. Great job!
the typewriter sounds are glorious
Great creativity , coming from a mechanical machine background , was an entertaining 37 mins.
This is quite amazing. Fast mechanical print.
I’m with you! In 2000, I wanted an IBM selectric teletype. They did make them. But, I’d then learned they were a whole desk! I did buy the tool to tune them, a dedicated briefcase, but had to be practical and settled for a later compact typewriter/printer with a daisy wheel.
When business letters were works of art on quality paper with touches like colored ink Selectric was king. The TEXTURE of these letters is very different than what is produced today on most printer paper. The world doesn't need that era back but it was interesting. You now have a VERY NICE high end Teletype.
The first computer I used was an IBM 1130 with a selectric console as its primary input device.
I learned C on a teletype 33 with a built in 300 bps modem.
The way they handled passwords, is the host would type over the input field multiple times to obliterate the field, then allow the password to be entered.
This and the noise of high speed dot matrix printers is the sound of computing as I know it. Home sweet home!
Awesome project! I remember using a 2741 terminal around 1974 connected to an APL\360 system via acoustic coupler. It had a sound that you never forget and you've reproduced it very well! What would be cool is to get an APL typeball and then use it with the original APL\360 (available open source now) running under MVS emulator that runs on Linux. I have it running on my Linux box, but only with an IBM keyboard with APL keycaps.
Very cool, worked on these for 15+ years, never did have to take apart the keyboard like that as they were that reliable. Yeah that was an (EXP return) to return part way back and type over and later on with correcting units you could use the correction feature. The others that followed using the exact same plans through a legal suit really never got them to work as good as IBM did.
Really impressive. Congrats!
VERY Cool!
Thanks for sharing your build up : )
The tele-type I worked with had similar behaviour to yours: every key you type is echo-ed by the printer itself, not by the computer they talked to.
Back in the day, shell programs had an option to disable echo to support these tele-types. UNIX shells still have it.
The reason I clicked on and now subscribed to your channel is my sentimental passion for APL and the IBM 2741.
With the ability of converting a IBM Selectric typewriter into a printer, and the 3D printing of typeballs (like the APL font), the real possibility exists that the IBM 2741 could be reverse engineered in 2024. I still occasionally use APL\360 via Hercules, but what a rush it would be to do it as in 1973!
As someone who did that in 1973, it *was* a bit of a rush after using punched cards, especially when it was the only interactive computing available. But the pounding of the golf ball flattened the thrill after a while, and we all lusted after the CRT terminals that were becoming available.
The rush pretty much died when I started using CP/M and DOS, with languges like C and PL/I that made it feasible to write programs that you could pass along to strangers without fearing revenge 😀
I've been on Linux for over 20 years now, and haven't even bothered to try the free APL.
In 1990 I owned an IBM XT compatible computer. It had 640 K and a 50MG hard drive. I bought it to my office to handle basic correspondence. I used a daisy wheel printer, which I bought from Army Surplus for $7, and use it for 2 full years. The printer was slow, but the print quality was great.
Love this project! You realized my dream and desires! This typewriter was a marvel of a special time. Btw, I’m a mech Eng. and did work at a metal stamping company. That process is critical to making all those parts. Suggestion: get a custom ball made. You can get a 3d printed one made by PCBWAY with powder stintering tech.
Hah. You already did at the end. :)
You made the typewriter Teri Garr’s character used on the Star Trek TOS episode “Assignment: Earth”. Bravo!
now that was simply amazing.
This is beautiful!
This is so cool. I have one of those late electronic typewriters from the early eighties that I've thought about trying something similar with. It's much simpler than a Selectric, of course. It runs on an Intel 8051 CPU, but that's about as much as I know, because I can't find documentation for it anywhere.
I've done one of those too! It was one of my first Arduino projects from way back. Even though I eventually broke it, it taught me a good deal about electronics and microcontrollers.
Oh my goodness.
This is amazing!
You are so smart!
Interesting factoid Fax machines actually predates teletype, as the first fax machines where for use with the telegraph
Dude, what you did is awesome!
Fascinating and a little creepy
This is such an awesome video!!! Great job❤️❤️
In mid-1970s, a surplus company was selling IBM Selectric mechanisms for printer/teletype conversion.
As I remember - and cancelled contract and numerous surplus assemblies with electronics.
I've got a Selectric that I found in a goodwill down here in FL. It is just Sitting. This is exactly what I've wondered if it could do, and it is exactly what I want to do with it. It might already be converted. I have no clue. And I am not set quite up yet to do any kind of work on it.