“Smut is the best kind of art” - Andy Warhol, probably

I made TV-camera digitizer in 1979 just for the purpose for producing realistic Ascii-art. One Mona Lisa in archives was definitively mine.

As soon as you said CAL82, I knew it would be a Snoopy calendar!

I remember my dad taking me to his workplace when I was in my early teens to show me the computers. He didn't understand them, he was a craftsman, but he knew I was fascinated by them. The men working on the computer where fixing the printer and when they saw me basically drooling over this magnificent machine they turned it on to show how it printed and they printed this exact calendar. At the time I was more interested in the absurd speed at which the image was printed than the girl but I think I still have that print somewhere.

Usagi: Printing just $ is pretty boring. Scrooge McDuck: waaaaaaaaat?

i think currently you are the channel that I'm most excited to see upload! your energy is just infectious and even though I know almost nothing about the technology you are working on, i find every single video you produce absolutely fascinating! I hope to see you continue to grow, you really deserve the success after all your hard work!

Now print a giant HELLORLD banner!

Turning the lock by using the handle of a rake pick was the funniest part of the video for me :D

I have and will never see or use a Centurion, but have enjoyed the series just because of your natural enthusiasm pulling me in :)

Back in the old days, I worked for a company that among other things sold line printers. The text file we would print as a test was a Mona Lisa image that spanned 2 sheets wide a 4 high you taped together. It did 4 passes on each line. It was impressive. We did chain and band printers up to 2500 lines a minute. Old mechanical stuff was always interesting to watch.

Next step is to port The Print Shop to the Centurion so you can print banners.

Great episode! I was not at all surprised that reforming the cap (the easy way, yet!) fixed the jitter. Take heart, that 1982 calendar will be usable in 2027.

Our Snoopy prints used to get the same priority as any undergraduate work. We used to have to punch our own card for these in 1976.

Of course we all wanted to see Girl82... thanks for the link in the notes... It's not too spicy, it's just ASCII or you can call it Spicy ASCII!!! Hey, that kind of rhymes 🙂

Cool - my first job in IT back in 1989 was as a OPs person working on some Burroughs kit. This was at a debt collection agency in the UK and we had to send out thousands of letters to customers each week -to facilitate this we used chain(or band as we called them) printers. My job was to clean the bands every Friday with a cotton bud and isopropyl. Good times.

Did not realize centronics connectors for printers were that old. Amazing.

My brother told a story about messing around with the driver code on his system for printer like that but slightly faster (supposedly 300 LPM). His story was one day something got wrong and it started doing just VT's constantly. Since the cover was open, before he could stop it paper was shooting straight up out of the thing and about 20-30 feet of 'green bar' was laying all over the floor. Watching yours brings back memories, a key part of being a programmer back then was printing out the listings and binding them up to hang in the cabinet. Ahhh... it was somewhat sad when we finally stopped and threw all those 10-15 year old listings out to clear out the cabinets.

Those bunnies are looking good and healthy. You've done great work on them, too.

Wow... that sound brings back memories... back in the 80's I work evenings as a Computer Operators. I ran two Sperry/Univac mainframes, running jobs that would process orders that were entered during the day and generating reports, invoices, pick/pack lists, etc... that printer sound really brings me back.

6:12 LockPickingLawyer inside !! 😂

You've done an incredible job David. Really enjoyed the journey so far :)

IT’S WHISPER QUIET!!!!

"Pornographic pictures I adore. Indecent magazines galore, I like them more If they're hardcore." - Tom Lehrer. "Smut"

Sunday afternoon geeking I’m always here for it

Got yourself another subscriber thanks for all the nice thing you bring back to life

Superb restoration! Thank you for your tireless work.

So happy to see the system finally coming together. Well done! 🤙

Thanks for another fascinating episode. I love your enthusiasm and joy when things work. Congratulations on a full set for the Centurion. Keep up the great work!

What an awesome video - so great to see the entire Centurion setup come together! Also good to see the tiny buns are doing okay.

Congrats on all your hard work!

Just wanted to say that I've been watching your videos now for a while now and absolutely loving the content. Keep up the great work.

Thanks for another great video! This is a such a cool computer system and I love that the Data 100 was built just 5 miles down the road from me.

Have followed this series from the start - really impressive that it’s reached the point where it can be used 'end to end' - from data input through to hard copy. Fantastic work bringing this piece of computer archeology back to life! And now you’re on to the second cabinet.

I come here to watch these videos as much for the tech as for your enthusiasm! As another commenter stated, your energy and excitement are infectious! Keep up the good work!

You are amazing. Your never say die attitude and enthusiasm for diving in head first into projects is a inspiration for all who follow you.

I remember an article in "80 microcomputing" (a TRS-80 based computer magazine) that showed how to create ascii art from a photograph. The ascii symbols were chosen for ratio of light to dark, and had to be done by hand. You created a grid on the photograph, and assigned light/dark values, and then the program would try to pick characters to match. The picture featured in the article was the authors wife's face. Very attractive lady, IIRC. Definitely not Pr0n, but i can imagine that was done a fair bit. Computer nerds being a lonely lot, for the most part. ^-^

I remember going to the kids Christmas party at my dad's work in 1982. The AV department were printing out ASCII art Christmas posters and other stuff. I got one that had Burt Reynolds as "the Bandit" that I kept for many years

WOW!! You've made me VERY envious of your success, even though I don't want one of those. And that's PERFECT!! I have so much respect for you! NEVER thought I'd see a chain printer that works connected to all that. I do work with other big old complicated stuff though; so I can feel you excitement.

Congratulations Dave on the so impressive fully functioning system! It's so awesome! Very inspiring!

This is great! My congratulations colleague! BTW Could you share girl82 somewhere?

Nice to see that 1982 calendar, you almost showed my birthday :D But I now know it was a wednesday... ;)

Man this takes me way back. It was probably 1978, I was about 7, and my dad took me to the local university computer lab. It was HUGE. No clue what it was now, but the computer scientist was nice and printed out an ascii JFK portrait for me on green and white striped paper. I kept it for years. I wish I still had it!

Usagi Denki going viral with ecchi stuff let's go :D i mean, the insides of that printer are quite something! jokes aside, another amazing restoration! as a kid of the 80s i missed that era of mainframes completely and yet i can see the beauty of working on them thanks to channels like yours. keep going man!

Wow ! I love those calendars !! Those are sooo cool to see !!!!

Absolutely brilliant stuff and a joy to see it working! That is the noise of my first days at work. Massive printers thrashing away, fighting the sound of a hundred cooling fans. The main thing I remember is always feeling cold, and that tea or coffee had to be drunk within minutes. In fact, it was so cold that many of us would work in thermal overalls..

I remember ASCII art and using the ANSI driver to produce crude animations in color. So long ago I don't even remember how I did it.

I subscribed to your channel after 2nd or 3rd Centurion video (the one that Clint from LGR commented) and it was a quite a journey in these 2-3 years. Thank you.

You are my favourite youtuber related to old computers!

Amazing I love old printers. You did such a good job, I think it sounds and looks great.

Congrats on getting to this point!

You can show it! It's calmer than most YT pics. Funny, I do remember "Girl82" on a Printronix.

Congratulations on getting the full Centurion system up and running. These disk drives (particularly the Finch) were so darn challenging. Glad to have a relatively easy W on the printer to finish things out. Now you can get to the important work of doing mid-80s oil and gas accounting. Oh boy! Are we in for some fun or what?

Epic, and hilarious! Thank you for sharing this. It's amazing it works so well!

We had a taller IBM lineprinter to go with our AS/400, from about five years after your system. It had a slightly lower pitch when it operated than your machine does. It was a real workhorse for us. Re-inking seems to have gone well, but it still looks too light to me. Yeah, ASCII "art" was all the rage at the time, and most of it was NSFW. Happy minicomputer to you!

Love your energy. Great Video. Thank you!

This is really great work. I have always wanted to see these kinds of machines in person. We had a computer history museum locally, but the pandemic caused it to close down, and so there are no machines like this close to me. I hope some day I can make it to a VCF show that you are attending to see the mini PDP-11. May you have a fantastic week!

I have tons of EBCDIC art. I worked on a 360 mainframe where you have much more control over a printer. For example you can print many lines over another for denser print just by setting the first byte of a print line. The images were on cards, but I copied them to 9 track tape. I also wrote a banner program on just two punch cards! you booted the mainframe from these two cards. since each card was 80 bytes, the entire program was less than 160 bytes! I did that in 1972. we also printed at 1200LPM too later on printed at 18,000 lpm!

I really like the music shout outs, really helps finding awesome new stuff. :)

Congrats on getting to where you are now with the Centurion system and peripherals !!! I worked as an FE with Kalbro corp, later bought out by Decision One, then DEC through the early 80's - late 90's and worked with all of the drives you have and the printer plus many more line printers; not to mention the MANY systems I was responsible for.. Your work is bringing back a flood of great memories and a few nightmares, LOL, of those days. I will let you know, for sure, that printer is capable of printing much darker than what it is now, just get a new ribbon and you'll see !!! LOL Who knows, maybe a case or two of those ribbons will surface as others see your videos. Best to you and thanks for so many GREAT videos and my trip down memory lane !!

I grew up in Leeds, UK. A family friend invited us to his work around 1979, which was IBM in Crossgates (suburb of Leeds). We were able to use the terminals connected to some type of IBM machine and print out things, one of the prints being a snoopy calendar just like yours 👍 This was one of the moments that got me into IT.

60 inches per second -- in a Rabbit. Nice. Good to see the printer working, but now we are all puzzled about Girl82 !! You should sell prints in your store.

I Absolutely feel your excitement, you are the Centurion king right now.

Those printers always freaked me out when running open. Nice job getting it all working! The sound deadening makes a huge difference, even through the camera, I can tell you were yelling less loudly after it was all finished and buttoned up at the end.

Congratulations getting all the whole Centurion setup working!

10:53 I'm glad my question about old ribbon re-inking helped, lol.

Very cool to see it all working :)

Still remember the CDC fast train printer I once worked on. Even faster that these band type printers. Had slugs with the letters on and teeth on the back and a whole set of them flew around a track in front of the paper. There were 3 whole duplicate sets of characters to reduce the time it took to get the right letter in front of the right hammer. Was maybe 3 times as fast as your printer. When you did a form feed it was so fast it threw a loop in the paper into the air until gravity pulled it back down into the output bin. Was connected up to some CDC Cyber mainframes.

Well delivered :) Thank you for the video!

This has reminded me of a time when I was a kid and my family went to a beach town one summer. On the boardwalk, there was a vendor who had a camera, a computer, and a line printer. They took a picture of my sister and printed it out as ASCII art on the line printer. I don't know whatever happened to that picture, but I remember being amazed by the whole thing. Also.. nice to see that the baby bunnies are doing well and are being spoiled with tasty herbs.

Fantastic work! Some of these band printers were still kicking about in production in the early 2000s. I recall that the lab VAX at college had one for the VMS system log that was eventually sadly disposed of; it was replaced by a far less exciting HP LaserJet with some sort of adapter. Finally, thanks so much for uploading the file! The file is a wonderful time capsule, although disappointingly tame by modern standards.

This is great. I wish I could see the Ericsson 230 I was teached on in 1980 working like this one.

One of my college computer professors had a massive Spock holding an Enterprise model in ASCII Art on his office wall. You need Lubricated Ink for printers!! Stamp pad ink will get sticky on its own... I am embarrassed to say I gave advice to someone years ago about re-inking a ribbon & it ruined a print head... 😕 There's such a thing as Printer Music...

Man, I remember back in the day, if you had a bunch of these printers, they had their own "soundproofed" room with thick double-paned glass, heavy doors with weatherstripping, insulation above the ceiling tiles, a raised for (with insulated floor tiles). Everything you could do to keep that sound in that room. And when someone would have to go in there, for the 3 seconds the door was open, all that noise would escape into the office, and you realized just how **loud** it was in there! whew!

In the 80's I used to print out stuff from my ZX Spectrum using a Centronix interface and parallel port cable connected to a dot matrix printer. What fun that was!

What an achievement - well done!

I used to work in a data center from 86 to 91. We had 2 printers that were similar to the IBM 5211. They used a high speed metal band with letters sticking out of the band. But the hammers didn't have to move side to side at all. They just had 132 hammers. This puppy could spit out a page full of text in just a few seconds. The main reason why we had it was for printing forms that had carbon copies. So orders and waybills and such. It was a supermarket chain so there were lots of multipart forms. Then they also had 3 IBM 3800 laser printers. Those could go through an entire box of paper (a stack of fan fold paper about 16 - 18 inched high) in about 5 minutes.

So happy to see the two bunnies alive :)

Hey, nice job on the Data 100 printer David!! The stamp pad ink *should* last for quite a while since it dries fairly slowly. I would imagine it would be a fairly simple deal to conjure up a re-inking station with some spare parts you have lying around, and a bit of ingenuity. The ASCII art is great! I did a fair amount of that in the late 1980's with my first 80286 PC, and an Epson MX-80, 9 pin, dot matrix printer. I must have worn out 5 or 6 ribbons on that dumb thing, and at least a full box of fan-fold 8 1/2 x 11 tractor-feed paper! (just on ASCII art).🤣 I can't remember the name of the program, but there was something that ran in MS-DOS 3.3 that would do large banners that would span as many pages as you cared to make, with huge letters in several different fonts. I used it to make a sign to hang over the door of my office with my business name for the first few years I was in the IT biz!😉

I can't tell you how excited I will be when you get the Phoenix up and running. I don't know why, but I'm kind of obsessed with that thing.

So awesome to see the whole shebang working again in its full glory!

This is the stuff I love, incredibly complicated, over-engineered mechanical machines!

Congratulations!🎉🎉🎉

Every time I see one of these old school line printers in action, I am just in awe of a mechanical mechanism that can do so much, so fast, with such precision! I had the privilege of starting my computer science experience in high school on an aging NCR Century 100 minicomputer in 1980. The line printer was 132 columns, with a slim disk/ring of printable characters for every column, and it smacked out a whole line of text in a single strike. It made a very rapid muted tapping sound like a soft machine gun. If I remember correctly, it's claimed speed was 600 lines (10 pages) per minute. One memory I have of my CS teacher, as I entered the classroom/computer room one morning, was seeing him crouched in front of the printer with ink all over his hands, installing the huge ribbon (after re-inking) the thing had. I was rather surprised to see it was as wide as the entire carriage. What an amazing piece of machinery. By the time I graduated in 1982, it was being phased out to be replaced by a low end IBM System 36. It had what they called a band printer, that was similar in layout, but slower (far fewer hammers) than a chain printer like yours.

I have no idea how the algorithmic gods sent me your way, but this is cool! Haven't seen ascii "art" since my cshow days ;-). Also picked up on Vulta, nice jams!

Ha ha ha, the lockpick the wrong way in the keylock that works, is such a McNallyOfficial move.

the stamp ink should hold longer than 2 weeks. I buoght a stamp pad in 2022 and now, we have 2024 and it still works perfectly with the ink that was filled in by the factory.

this guy needs to be more known to the public! What he does is really awesome!

I had that Snoopy calendar! My aunt was a systems analyst and gave it to me!

When I was 15 in the 90s, I had a PS/2 386 and an Epson dot matrix. Maaaan the ascii art we got on disks that we bought down the market was excellent. I had a full wall height asciiart printout of Sandra Bullock, printed on line paper and taped together. Those were the days eh

The stuff you have reminds me of Star Trek! The original series. Love it!

I took so many of these line printers apart when I was a kid.. My dad bought a whole bunch of mainframe stuff from the local college.. (mid 80's) . I know at least one of the printers had a spinning drum with all the characters on it..

What went through my head when you said, “I’m going to print a few more things,” was that you should print out some source code since that’s usually fairly long and sometimes you need more than a single screenful in order to understand what’s going on. So it’s both demonstrative and useful.

I was a 132 col tractor paper monger as a kid. I LOVED to use them to draw on and make big paper toys. My best was a paper colonial viper from Battle Star Galactica. I also made model airliners like the 727 and DC-9. That paper was the best raw material for kids to play with.

Okay you have to be spying on me, i just came back upstairs and refreshed youtube, how do you keep doing this?! Great video

I remember ASCII art aboard my Navy ship in 1973. I had security watch one night with a mate from the computer room. It was in our patrol area and he showed me his work compartment. He had a calendar on the bulkhead similar to the girlie one you shown but the image was made up using letter ink weights for better detail.

Oh, I remember that one ! Wonder what the history behind that is.... I also remember some very low res BBC Micro 'images' that wouldn't pass muster on KZfaq either - took about a minute to load up from a floppy....in colour too ... well, red and green dots anyway.

Thank you very much for this, you unmitigated legend.

Reminded lions of how their VIC1525 came from the factory with a nearly dry ribbon. After pondering ways to reink the ribbon in the days when that knowledge wasn't an easy goog search, a new Okidata ribbon got it printing dark for the rest of its life. Tractor paper was really expensive. Seem to recall getting a 1ft tall ream.

That "pint out" looks just like one I had on my wall in the 80'S. Raquel Welch, topless. My aunt was programmer back then and she gave it to me.....amazing 😁

I love how you included girl82 in the discription😂