Login
You're viewing the frontrange.co public feed.

Replies

  • 💬 1🔄 0⭐ 1
  • Raineer :blobrdm: 🦆 🇨🇦raineer
    Oct 13, 2026, 1:13 PM

    @chrisgerhard I serviced all of those during the early part of my career.

    I think toner/laser was my “favorite” as the cleanest and easiest to fix. I do miss the purely mechanical nature of dot matrix / impact printers, but ribbons still had ink in them

    omg I hate ink

    💬 1🔄 0⭐ 2
  • Cadbury MooseCadbury_Moose@wandering.shop
    Oct 13, 2026, 1:23 PM

    @raineer @chrisgerhard

    Changing the ribbon on IBM card punches was extremely messy, and the violet ink could take ages to clean off your hands. 3:O((>

    Lineprinters: no problem open the gate and there was enough room (and you needed) to use both hands to change the ribbon - plenty of room for gloves (which were usually supplied with the ribbon).

    Cleaning the print train required OLTEP, special sticky paper (it was pink and looked like old Elastoplast) and ear defenders.

    R nn,00E,1403WW/NFE//

    💬 1🔄 0⭐ 0
  • Raineer :blobrdm: 🦆 🇨🇦raineer
    Oct 13, 2026, 2:37 PM

    @Cadbury_Moose @chrisgerhard the little purple fuzz from the ribbon shreds were truly a bane

    I still have my 3M service vacuum (was a standard IBM service tool in the old days), and it's my favorite. Just works. on anything. The filters are pricey, though.

    💬 0🔄 0⭐ 1
  • 💬 1🔄 1⭐ 1
  • 💬 0🔄 0⭐ 2
  • tautologytautology@infosec.exchange
    Oct 13, 2026, 2:19 PM

    @raineer One thing I've always wondered about printers. In a world where we've had Wi-Fi connections as a standard thing for 20 years. I a world where you can buy a module that will do all the hard bits of Wi-Fi so that a device's firmware need do no more than just pass SSID and PSK.

    Why, in this world, do printers just never work over Wi-Fi? Is this just because they hates me?

    💬 1🔄 0⭐ 0
  • Raineer :blobrdm: 🦆 🇨🇦raineer
    Oct 13, 2026, 2:39 PM

    @tautology Yeah this is an odd one, I see the same.

    My honest answer is that I think every print manufacturer is terrified that people are going to reverse-engineer their device and create custom FW which can run whatever you want (truly would be a dream) - so that leads them to use non-standard, proprietary implementations which are typically garbage

    💬 0🔄 0⭐ 1
  • WellsiteGeoWellsiteGeo@masto.ai
    Oct 13, 2026, 3:06 PM

    @raineer
    I don't think they've ever risen from the primeval slime to the level of "enemy". Just a snare and a delusion to be avoided unless you have an *extremely* good reason for using them (e.g., producing 15m continuous prints on archival film).
    Having a printer graveyard for unboxing new recruits - akin to showing the novices the instruments of torture - produced suitable hardware terror.

    💬 0🔄 0⭐ 0