From my dad who worked on this: Oh my, such great memories. I was one of the designers for the ThinkJet printer. We created a whole new category of printers. First inkjet printer in the world. The 2225D was RS232. I managed the project, created the interface board, wrote all the firmware for the RS232 board - truly a 1 man ptoject.

@rawr51919

2 жыл бұрын

You're one lucky soul to have family lineage who worked on this! Still a pretty good printer for what it is today

@gorak9000

Жыл бұрын

My dad had one or 2 of these printers in the late 80's early 90's. I'm pretty sure I remember some combination of the buttons allowed you to feed the paper backwards to get the top of the form just where you needed it. Somewhere I still have 2 printers, and probably the original manual for them.

@gorak9000

Жыл бұрын

I think maybe when it's offline (the red light is on or off - I forget now) you hold the blue button and press the LF button and it feeds backwards? Or it feeds in really tiny increments or something? There was definitely something with some button combination that I discovered at some point reading the manual that made aligning the paper much easier.

@2010stoof

8 ай бұрын

Wow that's awesome!!

HP then: this ~40yo printer still works HP now: you need an HP account to print anything

@zaprodk

2 жыл бұрын

And subscription and expiry date on your ink 🤮

@IanC14

2 жыл бұрын

@@zaprodk errr, ink has an expiry date because it can expire. You don't need to subscribe

@zaprodk

2 жыл бұрын

@@IanC14 correct. But it doesn't stop working just because the printer means that it's too old. That's what I'm referring to. Also HP offers ink on subscription. This thread was about talking about how crazy things were today, which you might have misunderstood :)

@amirpourghoureiyan1637

2 жыл бұрын

DRM on ink cartridges is the worst thing they introduced.

@zaprodk

2 жыл бұрын

@@amirpourghoureiyan1637 Yeah but since they are selling the actual printer at a loss, they designed their sales model around it. But that is not what makes me most angry. It's not only the expiry dates as well, it's the regional locking of the ink AND the printer. The same ink and printer can be bought much cheaper in a country with a weak economy, and not be used in a corresponding product in another area. It's crazy.

There was a story told to me when I worked in HP's inkjet division. Over time, the plan was always to eventually contract out the production of older ink cartridges once the demand got low enough, to free up manufacturing capacity for newer lines. So they tracked the sales of the original ThinkJet print head as it predictably tapered off. But then, suddenly, it began to increase again. Looking for the cause, they discovered, amongst other applications, it had been utilized in a children's toy (I forget what, but I think it was similar to a Magna Doodle or Etch-a-Sketch) with a hardcopy print function. HP missed a huge licensing opportunity there. But it was thanks to how simple the first cartridges were. Later ones are considerably more complex and contain logic you might even call DRM, but the first ones were a pretty basic system that apparently even a toy company could figure out.

@evefavretto

2 жыл бұрын

But is it a cloned mechanism or an HP TIJ 1.0 mechanism sold by HP to that company?

@gregdaweson4657

Жыл бұрын

So the system was great because it isn't a locked down pos.

@nyccollin

Ай бұрын

Etch-A-Sketch has never had hyphens anymore. Mandela Effect.

The progenitor of a cursed, evil lineage.

@BilisNegra

2 жыл бұрын

We're talking crazy steep ink price tags I guess?

@dangerotterisrea

2 жыл бұрын

Needs putting in a wicker Man!! Thirsty creatures

@j2simpso

2 жыл бұрын

How fitting that the first inkjet printer was Dot Matrix, foreshadowing the matrix all consumers would be entering in the coming years with steep ink prices and unreliable printing mechanisms.

@resneptacle

2 жыл бұрын

@@BilisNegra Just InkJet printers being upper garbage, plus, yes, high ink prices

@semifavorableuncircle6952

2 жыл бұрын

HP didnt yet include its trademark unreliability in that one, but they sure did later. I have thrown more than one HP ink-pisser from a roof.

We're contacting you about the extended warranty on your HP Thinkjet.

@singletona082

2 жыл бұрын

In spite of both never having owned a car and having no legal capacity to drive due to my vision? I get those calls constantly.

@oliviamay

2 жыл бұрын

@@singletona082 i at least have a license, but no car haha. That's unfortunate my dude

@tarstarkusz

2 жыл бұрын

GREAT NEWS!!!! The FCC exercised the "nuclear option" and has threatened that any carrier that allows fake spoofed caller-id robocallers will be kicked off of the American telephone system. No access to the backbone. This went into effect on July 1. We'll see if they really start enforcing the goddamned law.

@rtperrett

10 ай бұрын

1:34 first inkjet printer looks like a dot matrix printer.

I'm imagining a sweet grandma still using this printer and still being able to order cartridges for it. Pretty cool.

@markshultz5032

2 жыл бұрын

Ironically, my grandmother used to have a Canon BJ-300, which was the Canon version of this printer. An inkjet (although they called it a bubble jet) printer with the mind of a dot matrix printer. Interestingly enough though, the Canon design used an ink tank with a fixed print head, similar to what Epson uses.

I recognised that immediately. I used one of these for my PhD studies. There are 80 pages of Turbo Pascal code printed on a ThinkJet in my thesis. I just checked it and the letters are as wobbly as you found.

D'oh, you should have mentioned you were looking, I've got one sitting right beside me. Keeping the "lid" down actually helps to keep the paper in place.

@amirpourghoureiyan1637

2 жыл бұрын

Thought that was the case, he probably winged it since it got in the way of filming.

i love seing first generation device like this

HP made a colour version called the PaintJet

@bfs5113

2 жыл бұрын

I only have the HP Deskjet 500C. 🙂

@KC9UDX

2 жыл бұрын

@@bfs5113 I have one of those too. 🙂

@paulmichaelfreedman8334

2 жыл бұрын

My first inkjet was an Epson Stylus color II. the color ink was useless on normal paper as it had a huge bleed, so it needed special paper. But the 720 dpi was the highest of the time and produced pretty nice images for the time.

@KC9UDX

2 жыл бұрын

@@paulmichaelfreedman8334 my first colour printer was a citizen 24 pin dot matrix. Fine for printing one colour at a time. But minced the paper printing two or more.

@nickpalance3622

2 жыл бұрын

I had a Paintjet back in the day. The local computer store had one and I just had to have it. $1000. Hmmm… Paintjet or $ for my first car? Well, now that I’ve spent money taking driving lessons and passed the road test, time to spend on my computer and technology habit! Prom? Girls? I’ll have to see how much money I have left over. 🤑 The Paintjet replaced a Star color dot matrix. I know all too well what printing color graphics on a dot matrix is like. Need to make a pass for each color on the ribbon. And the weird noise it makes as the print cartridge/ribbon adjusts to each color. Oh heck, just the sound of the impact printing! I made a banner for an event in high school and with each letter being a full page it took all night. It was loud all night. I barely slept. If only I had the Paintjet before my senior year. But I had to get my Amiga 2000 first. The Paintjet took a special “clay coated” Z-fold paper. Try regular paper and ink bleed!! The Paintjet was also annoying to load. Tearing off a printout meant wasting a sheet of the pricey proprietary paper. You had to have the cover over the print area closed as it opened inwards and blocked the print head. But once you advanced the paper to tear off, while I could get the paper to go back and line up at the top of the page, there was the issue that the top of a new clean sheet not already attached to more that were already on the outside would not follow the path properly beyond the roller. Wanted to go straight up and smack the dust cover. I don’t miss that aspect. Back to the Thinkjet, there was a consignment used section at the same local computer shop and somebody had a Thinkjet for sale. Don’t remember the asking price. But I remember seeing this thing back then.

i had one of these back in the 80s as well as one of those pen plotters. The plotter specifically was amazing to watch when plotting a drawing

that looks like the printer cartridge found on some old non thermal credit card printers. I wouldn't be surprised if that is the reason why it still lives today;

@evefavretto

2 жыл бұрын

And check printers, at least here. One store specifically sells the 51604A cartridge as a "check printer cartridge"

@paulmichaelfreedman8334

2 жыл бұрын

Likely used in industrial processes too, like egg printers that print the date on them. Such machines can be way older than 35 years, so the cartridge still being available isn't very surprising. The industry is still a huge customer for them. If this was only a consumer device cartridge, it would have sold out a long time ago. Also large format printers (designjets among many others) practically guarantee long lasting supply of certain inkjet print heads and ink as they also can be used for many tens of years without becoming obsolete.

23:32 Biggest excuses of the era: 1. "The dog ate my homework" and 2. "The ThinkJet ate my number 5"

Printer printing a picture of itself: Printception!

@paulmichaelfreedman8334

2 жыл бұрын

Should have been ASCII art to finish it off.

@lennaertedens4624

2 жыл бұрын

I used the printer to print the printer

@dashtesla

2 жыл бұрын

Imagine if the printer had a little more intelligence it would be amazed by it :D

The first consumer inkjet was a rather more complex affair and essentially jointly 'first' by both HP and Canon with their BJ-80. The understanding being that they were entirely separately invented at the same time but diverged towards the end via a series of litigation and design agreements. Both products released at the same time in 1985.

The coolest ending to a video I think I'll ever see.

@SeanJr018

2 жыл бұрын

Without a doubt it should be the ending from now on, but i know that would be a lot of typing to do lol.

@TechTangents

2 жыл бұрын

If you mean 28:37 where I print out the names I've actually been doing that for every video for about a year now. There is a tier on my Patreon page where anyone can get added to the printout: www.patreon.com/AkBKukU

@RandomInsano2

2 жыл бұрын

You should also look up Strongbad Emails

@BilisNegra

2 жыл бұрын

@@TechTangents Maybe not a subscriber... Or just pointing out how satisfying it was to watch the supporter page being printed on the ThinkJet!

From 1984 to still working on today just one word WONDERFUL and good presentation and especially at the end with credit 👍🏻

Thanks for posting this video! This printer takes me back a bit...I was working in a liquor distribution warehouse back then and they used these...can I say wow, I remember the office personnel were always fired up mad at these. A trip down memory lane!

9:20 those chips are probably roms holding things like the power on self-test, cleaning program and fonts. Many early HP printers even had cartridge slots for font upgrades, though these were usually for laser printers. But in reality, there is no reason they couldn't do that here. HP did make laserjet printers with cartridge slots. IIRC, my HP 500 inkjet printer had a cartridge slot.

Cool! I remember CuriousMarc did a video on the HP-IB interface version of that printer, so it's cool to see you doing a video on the parallel port version of the same printer!

I used to sell these for an HP dealer (so mostly the HP-IB 'A' version)... I remember being hugely excited when the first one came into stock - it replaced a HP badged version of an Epson FX-80 with a HP-IB plug-in card... Of course then they sold the printer for a profit and the paper and cartridges as accessories... Now they practically give away the printer and make money on the cartridges... The ThinkJet was of course followed by the hugely successful LaserJet!

I had a HP DeskJet 500 that I think was their first "modern" consumer inkjet. It was ancient when I got it, and thanks to miscommunication about when I'd collect it from the former owner it sat out in the rain for several days. Still worked fine after a clean, and after years more service I passed it on to someone else. Pretty much indestructible!

Shelby's back in form! Great video!

I had also been considering picking one of these up to play with. Thanks for covering it! I think I’ll stick with my HP IIIp for now.

HP Depreciated this model in 1994, so it was still quite supported for desktop use when 98 was released (I mean, of course, there's the driver for it, but I think you know what I mean).

@NJRoadfan

2 жыл бұрын

It likely has drivers because it uses PCL commands. Just a matter of some tweaks of a LaserJet or DeskJet driver and bam, printing on a ThinkJet.

@juanignacioaschura9437

2 жыл бұрын

Deprecated is the word

@thedungeondelver

2 жыл бұрын

@@juanignacioaschura9437 *Thank* you. I always make that typo!

Oh the joys of tractor loading! I had a Kodak Diconix 180si back in the day, I think the mechanism was nearly identical... and it was a portable printer! Anyway, it was great to see that the repair was easy... reminds me of a laptop CD-ROM I fixed yesterday... opened it up and it just had a loose ribbon cable, ha! As always, thanks for a great video and walkthrough of this device. Cheers!

I love the way that the dithered graphics look.

Wow, hearing that "dah-dah-DA-DA-dah" init sound again brought back a LOT of great memories! Thanks for keeping this old hardware alive and sharing it with the world.

I misread the name as "Thinklet" and now I'm sorely disappointed IBM never did that. Edit: I'm also dumb for assuming it was an IBM thing because the ThinkJet name is so similar to the IBM ThinkPad name. c:

@tarstarkusz

2 жыл бұрын

IBM made outstanding printers.

@Juanguar

2 жыл бұрын

I guess we could say That you’re a brainlet ? I’ll show myself out

@amirpourghoureiyan1637

2 жыл бұрын

Funny that up until the 90s, the ThinkPad was just a notepad from the employee merch. If IBM were the ones to introduced this, they would've used a boring 51** name - they started putting some personality in their products after the PCjr and PS/1.

@paulmichaelfreedman8334

2 жыл бұрын

@@tarstarkusz Also cost 10 times more, so were only viable in larger investments. HP made/makes printers in a larger price range. Worth noting, ALL (and I mean every single one of them) laserjet printers, have Canon developed engines. Any HP part you see ending with CN (which is about 99% of them) is sourced from Canon.

@tarstarkusz

2 жыл бұрын

@@paulmichaelfreedman8334 They were more, but not 10x more. All laser printers were very expensive back in the day. Even the relatively low end ones were $1000 or more. What about the early HP printers? Were they based on Cannon as well, presumably their copiers? Like I'm talking LaserJet, LaserJet II and III. Because there was a pretty major change from III to 4

They also make the ink cartridge in red as well (HP 51605R) and use to make a blue cartridge too (HP 51605B), and also Canon rebranded this ink cartridge as the CJ-3A for their various printing calculators. This printer was also rebranded as the Kodak Diconix 150 printer, the only difference it had a different shell.

This is the sound of a classic printer. Gotta love it.

Thank you for bringing back some old memories! Great video - although my experience with that printer was quite a bit different than yours. I brought a used one home from a computer flea market before Christmas in 1990. I was amazed by its compact size and its stylish design. But, I also remember the paper hassle, wobbly letters and especially smearing. I was so annoyed that I sold it just after new year and returned to my noisy, but reliable, 9 pin matrix printer.

Got less than fond memories of those. Mostly used the ones with GPIB interface in lab settings for getting hardcopy from oscilloscopes, logic analyzers and such. Don't think I ever got a printout that wasn' missing lines from clogged nozzles. Siemens also launched some inkjets at about the same time, basically replacing the printhead on a typical dot matrix printer. Sold fairly well I believe. I worked at Siemens in the summer of '85, one of my tasks was maintenance on their PT88S model. By maintenance I mean going out to customers, replacing the printhead and sending the old one to the factory for refurbishment.

These were great little printers. Where I had worked there were many. Very realiable.

I was hoping you'd use that printer for the Patreons at the end and you did in fact not disappoint me! I was even the first one

Made in Singapore, fantastic vintage model. Good find

We used to take these in the field where I work (rs232). I threw away about 10 of these a few years ago. Now I am sad!

I remember seeing the prototypes at an HP Labs open house in the 80s at the Page Mill facility. When they were finally on the market it could be found on just about any desk with a computer, which unfortunately back then was the HP 150. The HPIB (yeah, ok IEEE488 or GPIB) version was also used with test equipment. It was a real workhorse. They usually were reliable, but when they messed up they really earned their nickname of “stink jet”.

Minor point, the "printer" text on the label is part of the UL listing mark, it would be the certification category. Other devices might say "AV Equipment" or something along those lines.

We had two of these in the lab back in the later 90s. One was RS-232, the other parallel, eventually we retired the instrument one was used with and then the other printer broke and I ended up getting one of those parallel/serial converter boxes to use the working printer (I don't remember which way around the conversion had to go. Some good old plastic box with its own 5V power brick and a bunch of dip switches.) We still had real analog chart recorders back then! We'd get chromatograms both ways, old-style pen chart recorder and new-fangled printed out!

Man, I haven’t seen these in a LONG time, I use to have to work on these when I was doing hardware support in the day.

I think that we are living in a perfect timeframe where we can still appreciate original technology in its infancy and still have more advanced technology to compare it with. The generations in 20+ years might not be as lucky to witness such things unless it's through video.

the Patreon bit-- I've absolutely loved watching damn you got me hooked looking a dot matrix printer

This is giving me flashbacks. I was using a thermal printer at work for a bit and it just loved to feed paper after you printed something. *Print 1 line* "Well clearly you also want 3 blank pages with that one line". Although I think in that case the problem was it wasn't detecting the marks on the paper indicating where pages ended.

I've used that baking soda and super glue trick on lots of random things. Thank you!

My first printer was HP Deskjet 610C, it became known at the office as "The suicide Printer". It shake so violently from side to side that the table screws came loose and the whole setup came down to the floor, computer and everything. But dont worry, Even upside down on the floor, it kept going printing until the end of the page. A very brave and clunky printer. In whatever recycling center you are now, God bless you.

I remember the wobbly print was common on the first inkjets. Even when doing fonts, it took some years for the lower priced ones to produce crisp letters.

It may be laughable by today's standards, but when it was new... _Far_ quicker, _higher_ quality, and _much_ quieter than a common variety dot matrix of the time... it would have simply been brilliant! Amazed everyone upon first viewing!

I just got the same printer, if you keep the LF button pressed while powering on, it will print a test page when you then release the button. When buying a new cartridge there should be a new piece of paper to put in the holder in the printer (where it was tearing the paper), just put the shining part of that piece toward the back and the matte side towards the printer head, so it can absorb ink of the cleaning sprays

I used to have a Commodore MPS-1270 inkjet printer that used those cartridges. They were also compatible with the Kodak Diconix. I wish I still had that printer, it was kind of fun. I used the "Epson X Old" driver in Amiga OS to print to it which worked perfectly.

Man, I remember those... Never had one though. I really was envious of all that it could do compared to my 9-pin C= printer that survived through many computers. :)

great video -- i have been considering a dot matrix for a while, but the wobbly character of this inkjet variant is right up my alley! i've got a massive RISO printer from '91 that has me very interested in this era of printing. really, it's a digital duplicator that behaves like a lithograph machine. i think you would be interested in these, but they are ridiculously large and heavy. they were mostly sold in churches in the US during the 90s -- that's where mine came from. the ink transfer is done thru massive drums with big silkscreens wrapped around them. scan a document, and it burns that scan onto a rice paper stencil that wraps around the drum. it's super fast, but VERY finicky. My particular model has a crude raster image processor computer interface. i still need to get a period-appropriate PC to get it to work properly. seeing this video makes me want to make my own!~

Our local library had these...much quieter than the alternatives. Makes sense!

My family bought one of these used through the newspaper classifieds to replace our finicky color dot matrix. In a way it was a step down but it came with the prestige of ink jet ownership 😂. It had some kind of proprietary brand label covering up the thinkjet moniker on the cover so it took forever to figure out what driver to use in windows 3.1 aside from generic/text only. Glamorous.

Quite a few years since I've seen one of these. We used them at work with HP85 and similar controllers and other HP-IB instruments. They really built things to last back then! The DIP switches are to set the HP-IB address

@rawr51919

2 жыл бұрын

This is a parallel version, the dip switches set different stuff depending on the model and what it connected to at the time

I worked at a clinic and we had one of these hooked up to an HP3000 mini that we ran the clinic on. We used it for diagnostic reporting on the 3000

I have two of these, with Northern Telcom printed on them. One is DC and the other has it's own power supply built in. I actually still use one of them today on a network print server. The other old device i have from Nortel is a Display Phone Plus,

My Mother worked at HP and we had one when I was in elementary school. I was actually the only kid that was able to show up with printed projects.

Great video. Interesting note on the carriage return + LF option. I recently got two Kodak Diconix 150 Plus printers working, which use the same print engine. I had issues with the ThinkJet driver inserting line feeds between lines, so I'll try changing that option and seeing if it works any better. Uses the same cartridges, though I feel the ThinkJet is a bit faster. One of the problems sadly with ThinkJets I've owned in the past is that ink cartridges have been left in the carriers for decades, destroying the flex cable/contacts that connect to the print head, so the printer doesn't print the full character, or at all. My first memory of these was in a public library in the early 90s and I thought it was a dot matrix then, but astoundingly quiet, until I later learned it was the first mass produced inkjet printer. Thank you for this awesome video.

Oh man I had one of these!!! Haha that startup sound vrought back memories. I had an old tall IBM 286 and my dad found this at the old computer shows in the 90s (miss those) and I used it with that. I even remember the cartrige shape haha. Wow. I was born in mid 80s but when I was old enough my dad walked me through oldest to newest up to windows 95 to learn so I played with a lot of old computers which was foundational on understanding the newer computers. It was great and wish I kept some of them. I remember the huuuuuge 12mb Hard drive in my 286. Kind of a ps/2 case but a tall vertical one not a small one horizontal where you put the monitor on top. I had mine in a little rack that held the printer up and tilted it forward so i could fit a bunch if oaper under it I firmly believe the paper bowadays is overperforated. I used to have to fold the sides before ripping it lol. The new stuff almost falls off

I’m glad I’m not the only person who likes and collects old printers and word processors

26:59 Self portrait :D I love it!

I used the ThinkJet printers all the time during the 1980's and 1990's with the HPIB bus to print the screen view of HP test equipment (typically a spectrum analyzer). Prior to this printer, we had to use a Polaroid camera made especially for photographing the screen. Resolution was about twice that of a 9 pin dot matrix printer but, these were much quieter. Loading this printer was about the same trouble as loading most any tractor feed printer. These printers used special HP chemically treated paper to make the ink show up better, with regular paper, the printer quality is very light. Reliability of these printers was very good.

I have to grin. I worked at HP Corvallis near where the Inkjet was born. I had a clear plastic one and saw many other colors in the lab. Enjoy it. It was a good first step.

The Kodak Diconix 100 series appears to use the ThinkJet cartridges. Those were in production for far longer then the ThinkJet was and many are still in use!

I worked for Diconix/Kodak from 2005-2012 and I had a small army of Diconix 150 running experimental inks. Same cartridge but the printer itself was also battery powered.

Was using one of these at work to print test reports from an HP network analyzer up until about 2012 or so.

It’s been about 40 years since I used one but on the parallel printers I used then the dip switches were used to make the printer emulate a different model in case there wasn’t a driver for this one. And some may be to control the default font and effects like bold and italic.

For a loose metal axle or peg in plasric I usually scorch the piece that sticks in with a cutting plier in 2 crosses, it will never come loose then.

I love those screw kits. Whenever I need a screw that I don't have instead of buying one or two of them at the hardware store I just buy the entire kit of that type on Amazon. Nowadays I have screws for just about any application.

I had one circa 1985 with a parallel port interface. I recall a box of the carts cost about $90 and they plugged easily.

There is something wonderful about HP tech from that time. And I do believe the slightly wonky dots is unique to the ThinkJet - I don't think any other ink jet printer did that. It was an artifact of how the print head worked, specifically that it was upright firing at the paper like an impact printer. They largely fixed this for the PaintJet which also had an upright print position but then they devoted effort to the DeskJet line where the printhead printed down towards the paper.

Good job buddy

This was used in many public libraries in the USA in the late 80s and 90s due to their quietness - usually connected to an XT or AT class computer that had several CD-ROM drives . The print outs were needed for citations - either OCLC or WorldCat (or their combined product One Search).

I had one of those 20-years ago in high-school. They worked great, but yeah, those early ink cartridges were NOTORIOUS for leaking and drying out in the head.

I remember these printers well from my school days. Fun fact: those same ink tanks were also used in the Kodak Diconix 150. I remember the ink from the original tanks had such a unique smell once it was on paper ... sort of like a newly unwrapped magazine. I also remember the printer being incredibly slow - it took a good few minutes to print a page of plain black text if you used TrueType fonts from Windows instead of the printer's built-in fonts, which do print very fast as shown in your video. Seeing as this was first-gen inkjet tech, that's not very surprising. It was basically like a dot matrix printer with an inkjet head. Oh let's not also forget, the ink tanks in these printers barely lasted for 1000 pages, and cost upwards of $50 to replace back around 1990-1992... adjusted for inflation, that would be about double today - $102. EDIT: Just got to the part where you're printing the image of the printer - yup, that's about how "fast" it would print TrueType fonts from Windows 3.1, I guess it treated anything that didn't use the built-in fonts as an image of sorts. Interesting.

I'm like, I like old PC's and so on, dont really care about an old printer, but leave it up to tech tangent, to make an awesome video I enjoyed alot, that I didn know I wanted to watch.... keep it up

These things first launched as GPIB devices for the instrument market, and were mostly given away to sweeten deals on instruments. We bought a lot of instruments that year, and ended up with a bunch of these in the lab. They clogged with ink a lot, if you didn't use them every day. So, getting to that bladder was important. You had to poke at it to unclog the head.

The output looked better if you used the special HP coated paper. This paper had slightly more absorption and “connected” the dots for smoother looking output. Or use the bold font for darker text. The HP paper was also micro-perfed and had a very clean tear on the sides and between sheets.

In the early 90s this was our first inkjet printer! One of my school buddies family had bought an Epson Stylus color inkjet at the time and so of course I had to convince my parents that we needed an inkjet as well, and found the Thinkjet available used in the newspaper classifieds. Compared to my friend's Epson it was nothing but it was better than the color dot matrix Panasonic it replaced.

Last time I saw one of these was in early 90s. where British Telecom used to them to print out customer engineering work orders

I have a parallel, HPIB and HP-IL version of these. I think one might have a lead acid battery? I should dig those out and see if I can get one running again ... Thanks for the informative video and making me aware the refills are still available

Had loads of these at the last place i worked, what, 5 years ago? All HPIB variants. I was constantly surprised by the availability of ink cartridges for them! Even if they did constantly clog up and make a mess everywhere.

IIRC they used those tiny cartridges for a inkjet printing "pen" that you'd drag across paper. Don't remember who made it, but it was pretty cool at the time (not sure how practical it would be in the real world).

I remember using the serial version of these attached to Wyse terminals at my local library

There were inkjet printers before, but this was the first ever to package head & ink in a replaceable cartridge.

I had gotten one of those a little over 25 years ago, and threw it away. When I powered it on, the cartridge in it proceeded to empty all of its ink as the head moved from one side to the other. As for the age of yours, the date codes on the chips place them in late 1984. The big chip has the second line showing 8438 which is 1984 38th week. The HP chips both show 84305 which is non-standard, but probably 1984 30th week.

certainly a great piece of equipment for its time, but seeing you using this printer reminded me of how awesome it was when WYSIWYG printing came around

I used a ThinkJet exactly like this one back in the mid-late '80s at my local public library. It was part of a PC-based magazine article/abstract look-up system the library had called "InfoTrac", where you could search for subjects in magazine articles (and other periodicals, IIRC). Contemporary to the technology at the time, the InfoTrac system was basically a generic PC (probably an XT-class machine going by its case design, IIRC), with a early (probably a 1st-gen) Hitachi CD-ROM drive loaded with a disc of magazine abstract data the system would call upon to look for search results entered in with InfoTrac's DOS-based front-end software installed on the PC. The drive bays on the InfoTrac PC were covered by a thick card attached with velcro to the case which had instructions on how to use the system printed on the card (and to probably keep people from futzing around with the drives) which I curiously detached one time I was using it (when noone was looking :) ). This is how I found out it used a CD-ROM drive and disc to make the system work. It was the first time I found out about CD-ROM technology and had seen a CD-ROM drive--and it made perfect sense to me at the time, since my grade-school self then was already familiar then with CDs for digital audio. So I realized then that obviously the next logical step was to use CDs for digital data, too. Prior to then, I wondered how the InfoTrac PC was able to store all of that magazine data. :) And to print out your search results on that InfoTrac system, attached to it was none other than an HP ThinkJet printer exactly like the one showcased in this video. I remember it operated very quietly compared to the dot-matrix impact printers at the time. This is probably why InfoTrac chose this printer for their systems, so it wouldn't cause a noisy racket in the quiet of a library.

@medes5597

3 ай бұрын

That CD based infotrac system cost $4,000. Which seems insane given what it was, but the earlier laserdisk based system cost $20,000 and require 8 times as much space for the same amount of data as the CD one could do. Infotrac still exists today but its not as cool as the older versions.

I have that same toolkit. Loose-fitting, but cheap and gets the job done.

It was also incredibly quiet for printers of rhe time and was a favorite in public libraries.

For tractor feeding, like old Epson dot matrix printers, you need to load tractor fed paper with the first page passed through, with the top of the second page aligned with the top of the print head. You lose a page of paper but the page will print with the correct margins. This is because the tractor is after the print head. Apples Imagewriter II has the tractor behind the print head so doesn't have that problem.

Extremely cool little printer, I'm actually surprised by how small it is and how it's working after 40 years

I used one not much after this one back in the day. Parent's worked for HP and they were given one to use in their home office. I am pretty sure one of the wheels is intentionally free to move back and forth.

Back when Inkjet printers where still cool, now HP just rips you off on the cost of the ink, and generic/refills don't always work, which is why I switch to a Brother wireless B/W Laser printer that's well supported in Linux, Mac OSX, Chrome/Chromium OS, and the toner is cheap along with getting tons of prints in toner saver mode.

@johntrevy1

2 жыл бұрын

Laser is the way forward if you are not printing photos, inkjet just doesn't make sense anymore. If you don't use the ink jet printer often then your ink dries up or you waste a lot on cleaning the print heads.

@paulstaf

2 жыл бұрын

I love Brother laser printers, they work well with Linux. I also have a Xerox Phaser 6500DN color laser printer I got new for $200 several years ago. It works great and cheap generic toner works fine in it too. Works great with Linux as well.

@johntrevy1

2 жыл бұрын

@@paulstaf I brought a cheap Brother colour laser printer a few years back, I am still on the included toners and have a set of compatible high yield toners ready to go.

I purchased one of these when they were first introduced to use with my Amiga 2000. It cost $2,000. I actually still have both the printer and the Amiga (in storage). I had no idea that ink would still be available. It used a parallel interface so some type of converter would be required to use it with a modern PC and, in any event, I have faster, better, cheaper color printers.

Our college used an updated version of this printer back in 2003. The printer was the same age as me.

Automatic perforation tearer, the best

The WP-2 gives me an idea to make, a modern-ish version of it, just with a Pi zero W(H). might do it one day and make a vid on my *struggles*

Close the lid when printing, it's meant to keep the paper in the right place.