[HECnet] Which is THE dec printer?

On 2014-01-15 15:31, Dave McGuire wrote: On 01/15/2014 06:27 PM, Cory Smelosky wrote: The LA180 has more in common with the LA120 than the LA36. There is also a serially-interfaced variant of the LA180, which has a serial-to-parallel (*NOT* "Centronics" parallel, for others reading this) converter board mounted internally. That's...quite interesting. Why is it parallel internally... Because the primary intended configuration for those printers is with dedicated printer controller boards like the LP11, LPV11, and LS11. Ahhhhh. Interesting design choice, to be honest. I bet it was a bit proprietary though....fast as well. Of course it's proprietary. You ordered a printer from DEC when you ordered your computer from DEC. It was a very different world back then. A lot of people (myself included) insisted on direct-in-the-bus printer controllers when we saw how badly serial printers tanked the system when we connected them to DZ11s. ;) Heh! The DZ-11 is a hog. We all know that. But the LP11 is not really much better. It's also interrupt per character unless I remember wrong. But it's only one printer per card, and no input. And of course, much faster, since it's parallel with handshaking. Johnny