Brother EP43 laptop typewriter
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 25 ส.ค. 2024
- In the mid-'80s, someone at Brother came up with the idea of making a battery-powered laptop typewriter. The resulting product is small, sleek, lightweight, and easy to use -- but was quickly rendered obsolete by the emergence of laptop computers and telecommunications in the late '80s.
The print quality is fairly good, but the thermal ribbons don't last long (about 32 pages, Brother claimed) and are expensive. Or you can take out the ribbon and print directly onto thermal fax paper. Some portable computer printers were made using the same mechanism. The printing is slow, but an LCD and memory buffer allows you to keep typing while the printing catches up. - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
I had one of these in college. It was great. I felt SO on trend. lol
I had one of these things and rogued all over the country with it, back in the mid-to-late 80s. I loved it--the quiet hum it made when it thermally printed, the agreeable tension of its keyboard, the dinky little LCD screen, the fact that it ran on C batteries, all of it. The only drag--and it was a consideration you had to constantly keep somewhere in the back of your mind--was that it required those VERY specific, EP-model thermal ribbon cartridges; even in the heyday of this model, it wasn't necessarily easy to find places that kept them in stock (it felt so good when you could manage to stockpile three or four spare ones in reserve!). Thanks for posting!
I had one of these in school--back when Apple ][e was the stylish computer going.
I thought this machine was fantastic. Because it types so quietly (the only real noise is the sound of typing), I took it to all my classes with me and typed all my notes which was a lot faster than writing them, so I had better notes--and easier to read--than anybody else!
I spent a fortune on ribbons for the thing, but it was totally worth it. And occasionally other students would pay me for photocopies of my notes which helped offset the cost of ribbons.
.Bought mine '86-'87,was round $135. Couldn't have done my papers without it .Being a procrastinator,I carried it to school and worked up to the last minute possible.Still have it and plan on having daughter work on her typing skills.
I had this exact same typewriter when i was in high school in the late 80s. I used to ttype essays in study hall with it and you could barely hear it. The fact it could run on batteries was a huge plus for me taking it from class to class.
@Lachlant1984 The printer is very quiet since there is no impact. There were portable PC printers made in the early '90s which used the same design. I have no idea if the ribbons are still made. If they aren't, you can always print onto thermal fax paper without needing a ribbon.
I like the demo. Too bad about TH-cam not having HD back in 2009, lol.
Actually TH-cam introduced 720p HD in late 2008. I just wasn't using it for most of my videos until a few years ago.
Oh; I hadn't even started using TH-cam until about 2012, so I didn't know.
Thanks for the tip. I had no Idea, one can use Thermal paper with these. I use these type writers as my "TO DO LIST", if an idea comes to me I type it, while I am doing other things. I don't need to be staring at the LCD screen all day long. Also A Typewritten paper to do list you can make marks on and make changes. I like it.
dude. i just went to thriftway, got one of those printing calculators, and saw that typewriter while looking through the stuff! i looked up videos about those calculators, and i saw this video! what a co-inkey-dink
Nifty, had no idea there was such a thing as a battery operated typewriter.
Think I'll stick with my manual though, this one sorta takes all the fun out of writing on a typewriter.
Thats a sweet typewriter!
I've got a mid 80's standard electronic typewriter from Brother. It also has a demo feature sort of like yours.
Most models allowed you to write entire documents in WP mode without printing at all until ready. There were a lot of battery powered thermal ribbon word processor - typewriters back then. My favorite was the Sharp PA-1050 which had excellent resolution and speed, a great screen and an expansion port for a spell-check dictionary / thesaurus cartridge. The Canon Typemate 10 wasn't my favorite since it had a small LCD, 9-pin dot matrix print out appearance, slow and loud line feeds, a tight keyboard response, but they came in colors and looked good!
I had one that typed on stone tablets. A prehistoric bird would pop up and peck the letters into the stone tablet with its beak.
Must have been expensive to churn out copies - that bird would want paying, even at prehistoric rates...
@@algayathi Yes... And adjusted for inflation :-)
Are you Fred Flinstone?
@@signbear999 and if so, can we have your autograph?
I had one of those. Slightly different model. Mine, as I recall, stored more than just the characters on that screen. I later had several Smith Corona word processing typewriters. If memory serves they could store two pages in memory. And it was real daisy wheel typewriter. So, unlike the Brother, the results looked like they'd been typed on a regular electric typewriter. Great machines.
very handy for my typing test, no worries about long wire and wire extension.
Seems functionally very similar to a BP-30, but with a standard ribbon printer instead of the funky pencil system :P
I still have this model. The only thing I am missing is the Owner's Manual. My 6 YO was having a lot of fun using it.
That's neat typewriter!
I still have two typewriters, too
I had a slightly different version of this in 1992 for my college work :o) Turned out to be rather expensive to type stuff on but did the job at the time :o)
RetroGamerVX Batteries and ribbons/thermal paper added up quickly?
I have a Canon StarWriter that can run off a battery (I believe it's a custom one, there's a large space for it behind the LCD). Brought it for the massive sum of £6 and have always loved it. It's a full word processor with a lot of built-in functions in it's software and a 3.5" floppy for transferring files to/from a computer. It's huge and nowhere near as quiet as this though!
I used it a fair amount but now most things I write require pictures, or graphics beyond what it could handle, so it's kept in it's box.
Do you know the model number of your StarWriter? I have a 1992 StarWriter 85 and I used to love using it, it still works I think, but the printer needs some maintenance and I don't know if Canon make the cartridges for it anymore. My StarWriter isn't battery powered, it must be plugged in. We used ours as a computer printer for about 2 years or so, it's black and white only, but it was a good printer for the time we used it.
StarWriter 30 I believe, wasn't particularly fancy compared to some of the models you could get, I have no idea if mine can be used as a printer, although I'd think not!
GloomyJD
We used to have a StarWriter 30 back in the 90s, often did schoolwork on it (which annoyed the teachers as they never stipulated work had to be hand-written!!!), it never had a battery fitted though, and it eventually got relegated to being a dust collector when the printer tape ran out and we just used a PC more often to type on, still had it in 2004, but I don't know where it went after that...
I bought one of those for a girlfriend of mine in the mid 1980's She loved it!
I have a Canon TypeStar 5 that is very similar in form factor and features. I wonder if they're based off the same underlying design/electronics? Not sure if Canon and Brother shared product platforms in the past.
I think this is the first video I saw of yours, that was back in 2009
That's really neat. Lighter than laptops we have today. I wish I have one though I have a Royal 200 portable typewriter and a Smith Corona SL 575 electronic typewriter. Does the ribbon goes one way without reversing like on a manual typewriter does?
Very cool.
It sounds like a dot matrix printer. I like it!
I learned to touch type in 1992 and in 1993 I wondered if there was such a ting as a portable battery operated electronic typewriter. I believe Canon have a rather early model StarWriter that has ink tape in it and can use C cell batteries, later StarWriters such as the St*rWriter 85 which I have are full word processors with bubble jet printers and floopy disk drives, very advanced machines for 1992, they were quite expensive back then.
that looks pretty cool!
cool stuff. A laptop before there where laptops.
Very useful for in-office resume fill outs.
So cool
so cute little machine
Are there other type of typewriters like this? As in like a portable electric that runs on batteries?
I used to use this typewriter in high school back in 95.
was it any good?
I loved it back then.
Cool, I would like to get of those portable battery typewriter for my little girl. ...
I WANT ONE!
I kno im very late with this comment but my fiancees father found this in the basement to their new house and i would love to see if it still works but i cannot seem to find a replacemet ribbon caseete for it and was wondering if anyone might kno what type is compatible?
@Lachlant1984
brother is still around, I took a computer aided design class and a computer assisted manufacturing class, and some of our printers were made by brother.
@Lachlant1984 I donated it to a charity rummage sale. I'm guessing it was probably made in Japan.
I got one of these from ShopGoodwill, but I can’t figure out how to make it work right. It prints fine on thermal paper, but each line is indented more and more. Don’t know what I’m doing wrong, how to program it etc. and can’t seem to find a manual for it online. I keep looking, but have found nothing, any suggestions?
I want a typewriter like that. does anyone have any good advice for a beginner with these types of writers?
The printer seems very quite, ideal for an office situation back in the time this was new, is the printer quiet? How long would you say the batteries last? Do Brother still make the thirmal ribbons for it? Do you have the AC Adaptor for the unit? I really like the idea of this unit, I would have liked something like this back in 1993 if my family hadn't bought the StarWriter 85.
Does this model have a serial port on the right side?
@GoRetro100 No clue, and not much.
Any idea on wher to get the ribbon? Can I use a universal ribbon? They're running out on Ebay and don't know what to do with it since I only have 4 ribbons left
I always thought they missed a trick by not making typewriters able to be used as computer printers, also being able to send/receive fax messages with a typewriter (sort of a fax machine with a keyboard) would have been good. If I was to search ebay for a suitable old electric typewriter to hack into the product I described above, which machines would be suitable to hack/connect to an Pi/Arduino & modem board?
There definitely were typewriters that could be used as computer printers, such as the IBM Wheelwriter I did a video about.
Oh brother.
How do you use fax paper without the cassette printing tape? I'm very interested by this
You just put in the paper and don't use the ribbon.
@GoRetro100 I think when I had mine for my school work in the 80's it was over a hundred pounds so quite a chunk in those days..
but does it print from a computer (or is that only the EP22/44)?
Are Brother still around today? Where was this typewriter made?
Are there typewriters like this that don’t have thermal ribbons?
There may have been some that used an inkjet mechanism. But most were thermal.
what switches does this keyboard have?
Cool🌞
had 1-2 and I loved ttprint bidirektional Print
When typewriters are slow it doesn't really matter all that much. A human being is also not able to write at the speed of printer, so no big deal here. This particular model seems to be some kind of a low budget typewriter and I could only imagine that an owner of this would only be glad it got it so cheap for him to be able to do his work instead of complaining that it is slow.
vwestlife, do you still have it? because i really want to buy it from you, please i need a quiet typewriter and you are a person i can trust
Sorry, I don't have it anymore.
Ok. Thanks for the reply
Oh it is?! thank you, ill go and check it out soon
+Euro Buses NO There is one in Amazon for $86. I purchased my back in '84 and paid close to $330!
Interesting, thank you :-)
My main youtube account is- Composite guy btw
No, this model does not work as a printer.
All work and no play make Jack a dull boy
Can you tell me,,,does this typewriter have electronic dictionary, does it "beep" if you make a spelling error?
+DallasCityGurl No. This is an electric portable typewriter, it uses an AC adapter or 4 C size batteries. This is not a laptop computer.
I'm pretty sure the op knows what a typewriter is. What they describe could easily be a real feature that some electronic typewriters may have.
Where can you pick up ribbons for this model?
eBay
what did it print in the demo test?
+Touka Kureha
This is what is printed out on DEMO mode:
Hello!
Some of the amazing features of this revolutionary machine include BOLD FACE TYPING, EXPANDED TYPING, EXPANDED BOLD FACE TYPING, Automaitc underlining, Automatic Centering, a built-in calculator (2+2=4), right marging, plus MUCH, MUCH MORE !!!
IIGalaxieII Looks like it is using a LOT of expressions!
Your you sale yours typewriter?
No.
What about brother ep-44? I have one but when i type nothing happend
Probably it needs a new ribbon.
VWestlife thanks i fix it know 👍👍
This thing What have been cooler if it had the ability to connect to a monitor.
omg wtf thats so cool
DVD QUALITY
I had this model and disliked it. You cannot type onto a form. I only liked that it did large print characters. As a typewriter, it stinks.
why would any one want a typewriter?
Because when you use a computer for paper documents you'll only get 10 years avg at the most. A typewriter, especially a desktop manual, will last 100 years or more. They're over engineered. Plus it gives a classic feel and look to the paper and desk.
Because some people only want to type stuff and nothing else. They don't need and expensive computer.