IBM Wheelwriter 6 Typewriter Hack
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 ม.ค. 2017
- A reverse-engineered typewriter hack to make it into a printer. Using a simple MOSFET circuit and an Arduino (actually, a Light Blue Bean+ arduino compatible board), I reverse-engineered my IBM Wheelwriter 6 typewriter to print out text and some rudimentary graphics. The GitHub repository is here, and I'll continue to update it with schematics, etc., when I get some time: github.com/tofergregg/IBM-Whe...
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My mind just short circuited when you did mot matrix art That is brilliant.
Awesome man, very nice! Love the sound of it hammering away!
Ahh Clarus! like any dog, it can do flips and tricks, and like any cow, it can do precision bitmap alignment!
A M A Z I N G ! A big cheer to you, Sir!
I've been thinking for some time now about converting my Wheelwriter 6746 into an "old school terminal", which would output key strokes to serial and print screen output on the paper...effectively re-inventing a teletype, I know, but every time I look at this beauty I think to my self "you have a lot of potential!" :-)
Decided to build this using my IBM 6747 (german Variant of the Wheelwriter 6). After struggling with a broken USB cable and installing pyserial on Windows I can confirm it works nicely :)
Woo-hoo! Great job!
Genius!! I want it!
Amazing project!
I got myself an IBM 6746 and I will try your project and see If I make it to work
cheers!
Nice Job!
Nice project! I'll be doing something similar, also on a Wheelwriter 6.
Amazing!!!
Neat. I am trying to find one of these as a printing terminal.
You're a madman
SUPERCOOOL!
This is great work! I've successfully implemented your code as a wifi-enabled (using ESP8266) tcp serial ASCII converter on my Wheelwriter 6. One thing I was wondering is, did you connect the bus wire to the port in the back? (the one with the flip off top) I made an adapter to connect it with the ribbon cable but, plugging a circuit board to the top would certainly be cooler. :D
Awesome. Yes, I connected it to the bus on the back, with the flip-top. Glad it is working! I attempted to use an ESP8266, but I couldn't get the timing to be precise enough. Did you have to do anything in particular to the timing?
Oh, sorry I didn't specify but I set up the ESP8266 to communicate with an ATmega via serial. Essentially as a telnet to serial converter. Although, when I have more time and pick up a logic analyzer I was planning to try using the ESP directly. One major problem (at least with my ESP) is it always spews out garbage on start up which glitches the typewriter, so not sure if that's a good idea. On my setup i have it send a "password" sequence to the atmega before it types to get around that.
Do you still have your code? I’m looking to do something similar
Cool :D
Hi, i'm fully interest about the tools you used to reverse and discover the codes send to the typewritter. Greetings
Chris - cool project. Have you looked at tapping into the keyboard and making into a full fledged hard-copy terminal?
Thanks! I haven't specifically looked into that, though I don't think it would be too difficult. Capturing the output of the bus is certainly doable, though the Arduino is on the edge of being fast enough to both capture and place data on the bus.
so what does the mosfet and resistor do in this circuit?
I found an IBM 6746 which seems nearly identical, but don't really want to solder SMCs, is it possible to replace the components with some through-hole parts like an IRFZ44 and a trimpot?
Hello, thats awsome. I have the IBM 6747-2. At the back i also have those ports.
I'd like to do that too. Is it hard to make that? I speak german, so it's not that easy to understand all of your instructions.
do you happen to have a schematics that doesnt require SMD's? I have 2 wheel writers and would love to try and help contribute
I would love to have an optional printer board for my Wheelwriter 30.
Hmm -- this could work for you, but I can't seem to tell if the right port exists (looking at the picture here: s3.amazonaws.com/kpsurplus_images/596ed3d81bdd02da9cad15b047c65c8cb31d9ade.jpg). I would need some pictures of the back circuit board to see. But, it is most likely possible.
I have an IBM Personal Wheelwriter II, noticed it has a parallel port on it as well as key labels like "print" and "spell on/off" and "printer on/off". Does that means whoever owned it before already installed the kit? (kit being the printer feature upgrade etc) or did these typewriters already come with a parallel port and just need the user to install additional hardware to make use of it?
The Wheelwriter II did not, as far as I know, come with a parallel port, so the previous owner probably installed the kit. I understand that they are quite rare kits, actually.
moof!
I tried to do this same thing with a royal typewriter. How did you connect the arduino directly to the bus? Whenever i do it it doesnt work
This is an engineering challenge -- it took me many days to figure it out for the IBM. The different bus on a royal typewriter (if it has a bus) is going to be different and will require reverse-engineering.
hy Chris , my name is Wanderson and work in city hall Sertãozinho-SP- Brazil, I am eletronic repair and the city hall have 3 ibm 6756, i am like restauration this for the server was like a printer. Do you help me , assistance ? thanks !
I must say you're an electronic wizard ! So many of these WW's came with optional printer boards in the beginning so they could be used as printers, but quickly laser printers emerged & got cheaper. I have taken 100's of those optional printer boards off these WW's & threw them away since. Phoenixtypewriter.com
Thanks -- it has been a fun project. I designed a PCB for the components, and I may put them up on eBay for anyone who wants a current solution (USB) that doesn't require a parallel port. Interesting that you have thrown so many of the printer boards away...I think they might be worth something today!
Hi, Chris. I am attempting to the same thing with Brother Ax 24 typewriter. Will your "plug and play PCB component" work for it. If you like....I can send you a picture of the microcontroller. Thanks
@@DrChrisGregg I would like to purchase a PCB. Looks like a great project. kschildt att gmail dot com. Thank you 😊
Aw, my Wheelwriter 10 has a totally different option interface. I got excited :(
Two big ribbon cable sockets, routed to the 8088's address & data bus + a couple pins of some big black box ASIC. Leave it to IBM to over complicate it! lol
Probably impossible to reverse engineer without the option module... Too bad the schematics for these are unobtanium (and the option boards)
I'd probably have an easier time reverse engineering the keyboard, and making an Arduino keyboard emulator or something
I have a Wheelwriter 10 as well, and they changed the whole internal structure by that point, and I think most everything is on one or two chips, without a bus to capture from. I think the best you could do is to try and hack the keyboard connection, but my guess is that the fancy features (reverse printing, micro-spacing, etc.) are not going to be hackable on that vintage machine.
Yeah... finding a parallel port card would be nice, but I can already imagine the asinine prices people will list them for. "It's old and slightly uncommon so it must be worth as much as a car!" - the vintage electronics market in a nutshell lol
Maybe some day I'll try dumping and disassembling the 8088's [soldered in] ROM. It might at least give some hints about where it's looking for data or something.
But if it does that stuff on the "incognito" QFP chip, that's the end of that. I'm hoping those lines are just address decoding or something, baked into an ASIC.
If you're interested, I'll share if I ever figure something out
Great--I'd love to know if you figure it out.
I took the plunge and desoldered & dumped the ROM. Haven't been able to make much sense of it; I need to read up on x86 instructions. Should be interesting to learn one way or another I guess
If you'd like, I can send you the ROM dump
LeiserGeist cool-I’d love to see it!
Is it possible to get the keystrokes? I.e. use this thing as an old school teletype?
Yes! I have a prototype that does that, as well. It uses an additional arduino, and simply captures the keystrokes from the buffer as they are typed.
@@DrChrisGregg I'm doing a project where I want to create a teletype chatroom. Any chance I can get access to your prototype project?
@@SteeveBjornson Why don't you email me directly -- we can chat. tofergregg@gmail.com
Moof!