Now from my other videos you might have already seen the first of my HP printers
The Hewlett-Packard ThinkJet, the first of the inkjet printers. But as luck would have it
recently I chanced upon something older and more substantial
HP 2631 G and this guy was under a pile of much lesser printers and more modern
ones - this one is 1978 - and covered with dust. But I recognized it
and this is the real deal.
Fifteen-inch paper, tractor drive for paper with holes. It's a dot
matrix printer 180 characters per second, the drive has no
belts, this is a true machine screw drive.
They are said to be very reliable so I had good hopes that this
one would work so I just took it. And under the dust
was this very beautiful printer. Let's see if we can make it work.
They are said to be very reliable so expected this one would work when I put the ribbon in, but it does not.
Oh, it does better than last time I turned it on. Last time all the lights were on. But buttons do nothing, self test does nothing, line feed
does nothing. It looks essentially dead.
There were 4 captive screws at the bottom.
OK. It's a complicated beast.
I'm going to have trouble if I have no schematics for this.
Huge caps!
Nothing. We have a dead processor.
So while I was re-setting the cards I noticed something that cannot be good.
This is the top connector assembly, and this one has been repaired. There is a crack, there is glue.
Glue right here
And the connector bows.
And I have different results if I unplug one card and
I plug those two to either these or these, I get different results.
So the connector is definitely not making contact where it should. I need to change this first.
Well. Wouldn't you know it. You find everything in Silicon Valley
I could not find this connector on ebay or anywhere
But I went to my local surplus store - found something pretty close. It's the same thing except it has ears.
So I should be able to replace it.
Alright. New connector. A little bit bigger. But it's just ears.
OK. It fits.
I don't expect it to solve all my problems, but...
[beeps loudly] Aha!
OK now when it power on, it beeps.
Then it stops.
And there is one light here that's blinking, not sure what it means.
(beeps) Doesn't like to be placed online... Self test works? Nope.
Reset [long beep]
Nope. Well, a little bit more life.
I have a stupid thought.
If when I press online it beeps and doesn't go online, maybe it's just complaining it doesn't have enough paper...
Aha. No beeping!
It goes online!
Self test?
It does it, it does it!
Oops. My paper isn't wide enough!
I repaired it! Self test OK.
It's not perfect but...
I resurrected it from the dead.
Hmm. I need to work on the head. There are some pins that aren't working.
Woohoo. Pretty good!
OK. So it was a bad connector. It goes in my collection of failed vintage parts.
One more.
Out it goes.
It's a lot better now. I can see the wires.
It's all reinstalled. There were a couple loose screws and also there is this lever here that's a pretty important adjustment.
Turns out my friend Carl had an extra box of paper delivered to him
that was mistakenly the wrong size for him. But it's the good size for me.
So 15 inch of paper forms here.
And the right way to feed it on this machinem is from the underside actually
It has very good paper flow. It goes right through the middle.
Alright. So let's see what we can print.
Right now not much but the test stuff.
Right. Self test.
Goes all the way to the end now.
It almost works. I was able to print a few characters from my HP 85 on the HP-IB
but it always thought this was on addresses zero no matter how I set the switches here
So it's not responding to the HP-IB address. So let's see if there is something disconnected somewhere, this is so weird
Now that would be a first: a dip switch that doesn't work. At least it's a simple failure.
why wouldn't a DIP switch work? Even though its a $1 part or 50 cents, I had to be curious
and open it up and the way this one is made
there are little rockers with springs and it pushes little gold balls around.
And you can see the ball is contaminated. It sticks. All of them.
So maybe if I clean that, I'll repair a DIP switch. And save 50 cents.
Super sticky.
And we put the DIP switch back together.
DIP switch test coming up [instrument beeps].
[laughing] I have repaired a DIP switch. Oh well.
This is heavy!
Here we go. HP-IB, address 1, over to my HP 85 and see if we can print something now.
Online. Over here, "PRINTER IS 701".
Print "Hello I am a repaired printer"
It worked. Woohoo!
It's moving like crazy on the table, but it works!
[laughing] It's dancing.
Alright. Offine. Form feed.
And we have a beautiful line printer.
Alright, so, now I can make the demo I was thinking of. That's for the next video.