3 Nov
2022
3 Nov
'22
9:17 p.m.
On 11/2/22, Ronald Natalie <ron(a)ronnatalie.com> wrote:
I’m not sure the model 33 required a carriage return
delay. At 110
baud it had plenty of time to move the carriage. back.
Other printers (especially faster ones) weren’t so lucky, but the LA36
decwriter had a catchup mode to print the backlog after a return.
The LA120 was boustrophedonic so returns weren’t as much of an issue.
The model 33 had a very fast and powerful carriage return mechanism,
good for cracking walnuts, but it took up to two character times to
complete a CR. If you didn't send two non-printing characters (such
as NUL), you risked having your character struck somewhere in the
middle of the line.
The LA36 DECwriter had a rather slow carriage return. It would buffer
characters while a return was in progress and then print the buffered
characters at 60 characters/second, slowing down to the normal 30 cps
when caught up. There was a company that sold modified LA36
controller boards that were hacked so that the LA36 always thought it
was in catch-up mode and could thus be run at double speed, provided
that you inserted NUL padding after a CR. But that greatly reduced
the longevity of the print mechanism.
-Paul W.