0x0028 - Dot Matrix Typewriter
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 25 ส.ค. 2024
- I found this Brother EP-20 and thought it was quite interesting
If I was going to seek one of these out I would try to get an EP-22. It would be nice to be able to use this as a printer.
It's a pretty cool little typewriter. It weird how this is one year older than the Wheel Writer 3
The traces on that keyboard PBC are lovely!
Came here to make the same comment, looks like someone did the routing of the traces by hand.
@@AndreasKoepkeAU So two people misspelling PCB :D
It's wild to see a typerwriter so well engineered and dead quiet that also has hand drawn traces.
2:29 "Despite its diminutive dimensions, it's definitely a desirable device."
Alluring alliteration, ain't it?
Bringing my ep-20 to school is fun. I used it for notes once in geometry. After that though, I just brought my 1957-58 Smith Corona Clipper Typewriter. What fun it was to use it on an assignments in English THE ENTIRE PERIOD!
That looks like a smart way to reverse the polarity on a power supply without chopping and splicing. It looks like a good way to adapt a DC power jack for other sizes also.
I had no idea these even existed. For the time, this product is a fascinating thing.
I've got an EP-22, and have successfully used it as a printer as well as a typewriter. Brother still market packs of 100 sheets of A4 thermal paper - they're expensive but easy to get hold of. I recently got five ribbons for £20 as well.
That little thing is wicked cool.
In 1988 in was hit by a car in the way to high school and broke my left hand. Since I was left handed I was unable to write in class so I
I bought this typewriter at Sears and brought it to class with me. The print sounds disturbed the class, but I was able to type on the screen. I used this for several weeks while my hand healed.
I know this video is several years old but I felt it was worth mentioning that you can get packages of thermal paper in cut sheets on Amazon and other sites, usually called something like PocketJet paper (intended for Brother's current portable printer lineup, which are thermal printers.) I have an old Citizen printer that uses thermal transfer ribbons, but I just use thermal paper sheets when I want to mess around with it.
Also, those mechanisms are neat. I had a Canon StarWriter with a print mechanism like that. Unfortunately I was a kid and I absolutely destroyed some ribbon cables trying to get it apart to fix/replace the faulty floppy drive. Live and learn...
I have a silver-reed exd-10! I couldn't find hardly any info for it online, so this helps a ton.
I had its cousin, the EP-22 (black case). It was on sale, new, as a veeeery cheap closeout in mid-1985 and my folks got one for me to take to college (thinking it'd be useful, bless them). It ended up being fairly useless, given that its font was very crude, and took expensive proprietary ribbons to print on regular paper, and my professors refused to accept anything typed on it because it lacked true descenders and they didn't want to have to deal with that... Of course, handing in thermal paper was out of the question, lol. I think I ended up donating it to Goodwill. I didn't even mind that it had chicklet keys (I was a proficient typist even then, however).
FYI: only the EP-22 and EP-44 had the RS-232 interface. That feature was popular for a hot minute between 1983-86 and then vanished from the featureset. No other EP series has it. I keep a pair of EP-44s to use as retro printers because they are LQP rather than having the Dot-Matrix print quality of the EP-20 and EP-22.
What does LQP mean?
@@tituslafrombois1164 Letter Quality Printing - a term that existed during the dot-matrix days to differentiate typewriter-quality print versus 9-pin dot matrix print, which was not considered "letter quality". It fell out of favor after a few years as inkjects and laser printers closed the gap in the text resolution they could produce. Very much an 80's thing. (:
@@tmunk oh nice! So does the 44 use ink or laser tech to produce the LQP?
@@tituslafrombois1164 It has a carbon ribbon (invariably 40 years old by now) and has a thermal print head, best results are without ribbon onto thermal paper like fax paper. Officially, 24-pin heads like this are "NLQP" or "Near Letter-Quality Printing", where the characters it prints have visible jaggies like low-res laser printing, but are solid enough to be pretty close to LQP.
7:00 the sproingy sound of regret.
I really liked this video. "Yeah. I think this was a mistake"
HA! I'm glad you also explained those dirty hands, man! I was like: 'you couldn't wash up first?'.
Thanks for sharing.
I'm not usually one to complain but i like loud dot matrix printers but the print looks amazing
Brother also had plans for a security camera in 1984... it was to be called "Big Brother" . This is just a joke of course.
Brother was/is a good and solid brand of printers and office like equipment.
Odd that the output font is so low quality and pixelated. It looks almost as if it's directly transferring the LCD contents to the page. I wonder what kind of work it was intended for? You wouldn't really want to write any professional letters using the thing.
That's because it uses a dot matrix instead of a daisy wheel.
What a thorough, excellent video sir!
I really need to stop procrastinating and get something like this, thrift shopping for retro electronics is almost impossible in the UK as they usually do not sell any electronics due to a legal requirement, & to make things even worse! UK e-bay is usually quite expensive for retro electronics.
1:11 excuse me, 6x9=42?
Zasiscor it's a reference to a series of books by Douglas Adams. He probably did it by splicing two video clips together, one where he does 6*9 and another where he does another calculation that equals 42 with the typewriter in the exact same position in both.
It does in base 13
Thats wrong
69420
I bet it would actually last very long on D-Cell batteries. One battery can output at least 5 amps each, so it could output 20 amps in total.
Mechanical typewriters certainly had left and right margins. And later models also had tabs stops on many (all) positions.
I've got a japanese portable with permanent tabs at every 8 spaces and my Selectric can mechanically set a tab basically anywhere, but for a digital device from that era it's a pretty cool feature still.
That keyboard looks about as miserable as the PCjr's original dumpster fire. Impressive!
I like my EP20 despite the fact I hate the keyboard. But unlike every other portable typewriter I’ve ever taken with me the EP20 is actually quiet and won’t piss everyone off around me.
I have an almost identical casiowriter cw-16, it has the exact same features but is way bigger.
Thermal Paper is defiantly the way to go. It is relatively cheap, and readily available.
Brother makes quality stuff.
I have a few Silver Reed thermal typewriters. I buy letter sized thermal sheets from bhphoto and adorama
I think the EP-22 with some nice thermal paper would be a rather optimal solution as a printer/typewriter combo
Omg I want this! 😮
Isn't there an option for a continuous writing in which the machine goes automatically to the beginning of the next line without having to hit return?
I wonder if the 5 pads on the keyboard pcb are for the serial port on the 22. They are in the right location.
Awesome video
There was one typewriter which used an actual 9-pin printhead.
amazing tech
I want to have one of these becuse wouldn't you love to take this thing to class and take notes with it
That would be useful if you ignore the dirty looks :P
In the late 90's I use to lug around a Zenith Data Systems 286e Supersport laptop to class for note taking, and that was, and still is a beast(needs a new PSU, and battery pack rebuilt), so I would have loved this instead except for the ink ribbon, and paper cost lol!
well, it's not much more than regular paper if you use ink, and the cost of Floppies wasn't cheap either in the day.
YosefuJoe445 I use go to the flea market and get boxes of floppy disk cheap like 20 for $5 in bulk package without the labels
good point
I guess the ribbon isn't ink, but is instead a thermal transfer process much like brother's modern label printers?
It looks like the keyboard for the IBM wheel writer can be shoved into the machine. Is that the case?
Wish I cut find one of thise in denmark
Any idea what that trim pot on the main board adjusts?
I want to see Chyrosran22 review it.
I don't think that chiclet keyboard would've satisfied a lot of people.
Chicklet keys. *Joy.*
6 * 9 = 42
spooniom.com/6-9-42/
That would be perfect for an airplane. It’s small and quiet
what's that pencil thing you're holding at 7:55? it looks neat.
I watch all your video
I got my hands on an Ep - 22.
I've got one too, that I've successfully used as both a printer and a typewriter. Although the print quality isn't good, it's a lovely little machine to use and I really like it.
I just got one of these but the lid is a different colour
Let me guess though, you'd still drag the Wheel Writer 3 to work or the library because of the Model M keyboard?
The Wheelwriter 3 weighs about 27lbs on top of it's huge size and still relatively fragile keyboard.
I really like the EP-20, I wish I had a reason to use it. I'd probably end up designing a 3D printed thermal paper roll holder for it if I were using it all the time.
So, this is obviously hard to type on if you are used to typing on computers. But if you are used to typing on typewriters (which require 'pecking' at the keys because of the long-travel mechanical levers) this might well be easier to use.
Cute, but what's the point of dot matrix if you can't increase the font style and size, or can it do that? You don't say anything about variations in the font.
But otherwise, nice demo. Wish I lived in a larger metro area where stuff like this shows up in thrift stores.
Is that dot-matrix typewriter ASMR?
Neat toy
do you know what the font is on that thing?
2:30 Despite its diminutive dimensions, it’s definitely a desirable
Device.
10/10 great rhyme.
BROTHER
1:08 6x9 is not 42.
Now install Windows 10 on it.
Brother PAC411 Thermo A4 100 Paper
£12.07 on Amazon UK.
The same item is nearly $50 for me on Amazon US. Ebay only finds it outside of the US. So maybe the US wasn't a good market for it. Equivalent rolls of thermal paper are about 1/4 the cost and a ream of standard paper is about 25x less.
sonds
Not Brother but brøther
I have something like this 1 is there anyone interested here
the thing is so cute!
{whispers} very very silent, not suitable for loud annoying hipster typing tho. troll value=0 ;)
Man, so cool to see this Typewriter on your channel. I have the same model, but the gray version. Using it with Thermal Fax Paper, as cartridges are VERY hard to come by. Planning on giving it away, actually.
Because I don't have the time, money, and effort to keep an eye on retro stuff. And I know other people can give devices such as this typewriter more love.