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Ken Shirriff

The boards use standard ICs, but they mostly have weird military part numbers, making reverse engineering annoying. 10/13
19 March at 20:40 | Open on oldbytes.space
10 comments
Ken Shirriff

The military teleprinter took all sorts of protocols: ASCII, Baudot, 45.5 to 1200 baud, but the Shuttle takes just one (unspecified) After reverse-engineering the boards, I think I know what type of signal it needs (ASCII, even parity, 1 stop bit, 600 baud, 3600/7200 Hz). 11/13

19 March at 20:40 | Open on oldbytes.space
Ken Shirriff replied to Ken

Hopefully we can get the teleprinter to print. But first we'll need to do some maintenance. A rubber roller turned to goo that was soaked up by the paper. (Sorry, no photo.) So we'll need to replace that. Stay tuned... 12/13

19 March at 20:40 | Open on oldbytes.space
Ken Shirriff replied to Ken
tjhowse replied to Ken

@kenshirriff Incredible stuff! Please keep us posted on your progress!

Did that type of print head/drum work by rotating to present a facet with the desired symbol in the desired place then transferring it to paper via a ribbon and hammer? If so, that is wild.

NASA must've decided it was worth the weight budget to ship up this incredibly device. The frame looks like cast iron! I bet the symbol drum weighs a few kilograms by itself.

19 March at 23:10 | Open on howse.social
F4GRX Sébastien replied to Ken

@kenshirriff Tubetime is present in the fediverse at @tubetime

20 March at 6:47 | Open on chaos.social
David Penington replied to Ken

@kenshirriff Most of the space shuttle was early to mid 1970s technology, like this. It was meant to fly before 1978 & save SkyLab. Dot matrix was not around, except for some heat sense printers. Daisy wheels were new, leading edge technology. Dot matrix was new, low quality & slower. Definitely didn't want mis-reading because of low print quality. Standard spec's will have required line printers. With a Motorola 6800 CPU, this was a modern printer for the shuttle.
Rubber deterioration is the bane of all old equipment, including cars & chainsaws, from personal experience.

@kenshirriff Most of the space shuttle was early to mid 1970s technology, like this. It was meant to fly before 1978 & save SkyLab. Dot matrix was not around, except for some heat sense printers. Daisy wheels were new, leading edge technology. Dot matrix was new, low quality & slower. Definitely didn't want mis-reading because of low print quality. Standard spec's will have required line printers. With a Motorola 6800 CPU, this was a modern printer for the shuttle.
Rubber deterioration is the bane...

19 March at 22:41 | Open on mastodon.au
DrScriptt replied to Ken
Mister Sterling

@kenshirriff Crazy. Makes me think if the rack for the printer was settled in the mid 70s and no one thought it was worth fighting for a newer, lighter printer as delays pushed the first launch to 1981. I can totally see the NASA and the Rockwell-Boeing-Lockheed Martin guys saying, "sure it's heavy, but we have these things printing away in B-52s for decades now. It's been field tested."

*I'm spitballing that B-52s have these. But I do know that B-52s have text printers.

20 March at 1:00 | Open on masto.nyc
spmatich :blobcoffee:

@kenshirriff ah you answered my question here

20 March at 6:14 | Open on ioc.exchange
Christian Berger DECT 2763

@kenshirriff Didn't those get replaced by a system that could also reproduce graphics?

20 March at 6:26 | Open on f-ckendehoelle.de
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