Exploring the Crazy Xerox Memorywriter 645S to Get Video Out

[@TechTangents]

I have seen the two listing on ebay at the time I posted this video for the 630 Disks and the 640 Upgrade kit. The 630 did not have a CRT connected to it, and since the disks actually specify that they are for the 630 I know they aren't a "Universal Typewriter OS" and almost definitely will not work. I do not know if the disks in the 640 upgrade kit will work, we already know that these don't use a common OS, so it's possible there are feature differences between them that would make it incompatible. But that listing is $200, way too much for disks and especially ones that wont work.

[@kristofferrosendahl6719]

The 630 has a small display and no crt. The 640 has a crt but the software is not the same as 645. I got the 645 disks and a working 645. Can send you copies of the disks if you want? The output to the crt has H+V sync and video separated. No composite video.

[@TechTangents]

@@kristofferrosendahl6719 That is really good to know the 640 disks will not work. I would be extremely appreciative if you could send me copies of the 645 disks! If you want to reach out over email, twitter, or discord I can give you an address. If you can image them, just disk images of them would work as well because I could write them if that would be easier.

[@frogz]

i had 1 of these, i remember it having orange phosphor single color crt, i remember laughing out loud when i saw the intel/amd chip! i dont know if i still have any parts but if i find the crt, i will let you know edit: btw, i did scrap it years ago but im sure i saved the boards, if i saved the crt or not is another matter

[@frogz]

@@juliedunken1150 ....i dont think you know quite how much useless crap i have in bins and behind stuff, i have a complete smith corona pc with monitor!

[@frogz]

@@juliedunken1150 and if neither of them? dave jones or bigclive or diodesgonewild can tear it down and here is the schematic in davecad/printed and reversed/dodgey af as a bonus!

[@retrozmachine1189]

Oh wow. I actually worked on one of these things in a past job. Somehow the monitor for the unit had gone missing and the boss asked me to work out a solution so it could be sold. I can't fully remember what I did but pretty sure it involved a resistor ladder and some diodes to mix the signals to produce video for a mono VGA monitor.

[@absalomdraconis]

Haven't watched the video yet (still playing), but assuming digital output, that would be a sensible route. An R-2R network for D->A, diodes to clamp voltages, maybe some voltage division to perform some additional scaling, and you've got a good solution. Similar sort of thing gets done whenever anyone outputs VGA or Composite from an Arduino.

[@absalomdraconis]

Nevermind, analog, so probably just needed pin & level conversion.

[@retrozmachine1189]

@@absalomdraconis Pretty confident the unit I worked on had TTL output. I have distinct memories of there being an intensity line as well as simple dot output. Of course this was all many years ago so memory isn't guaranteed accurate. 😀

[@lasskinn474]

this is when your research and development budget is "whatever" and business plan is the same.

[@CptJistuce]

Xerox in a nutshell.

[@hawksights]

Machine: Still not doing anything other than spitting out a text on screen Shelby: YEAH, WE DID IT!!!! WE'VE GOT TEXT I love your excitement every single time :D

[@renakunisaki]

That is a pretty big step, and probably the closest to "working" he can get it without the software. If it were me, the excitement would be more like "hooray, nothing blew up!" 😆

[@hawksights]

@@renakunisaki Agreed. He def. has some knowledge.

[@sebastian19745]

The monitor and connector seems very close to some old cash register "computers" that I saw and had one. The monitor was 5" or 7" mono amber with the same 9 pin connector, power and video on it. I am not sure about the pinout but I am sure that there were to 12V power pins there.

[@JasonOlshefsky]

I worked for Microlytics in the early 1990s ... it's probably a spell-check board. They were using Xerox PARC text compression/spelling technology in a lot of their products. If I remember right, Selectronics became Microlytics, and Selectronics is the brand on a lot of those handheld spell checkers from the 1980s.

[@MLX1401]

The view inside is...just downright hilarious! If you can't make this thing print, you can propably launch shuttles with it. Or at least run a mid-size factory process line. Excellent video, thanks again 😄

[@IanSlothieRolfe]

There are a number of converters out there that can display arbitrary video onto HDMI monitors if you can work out the horizontal, vertical and pixel frequency - I think I've seen one based on the Pi Zero on Adrians Digital Basement and Jan Beta's channels. They seem to be able to make sense of even fairly unusual video formats. It might be easier than trying to hack the display card in this device. I graduated in 1984 and went to work in a Software House, and as a result ended up working in clients offices all over London and Southern England, and by that time typewriters were being moved sideways in favour of PC's as word processors, and you;d see strange creations like this under desks or in store cupboard all over the place. I even had a Silver Reed typewriter that had a serial interface on my desk in one place that we used as a printer for one PC. It would not surprise me that the 8085 was the processor that drives the "word processor" side of this device and Xerox fitted a 8088 PC inside to add in the extra functionality rather than develop a completely new device. Especially since it was probably evident that the device would have a short life span. My last sighting was when I worked as a contractor in 2007 for a mortgage company, and they had a word processing typewriter on one desk that was used exclusively for filling multi=part forms for one obscure compliance process that they had to use, because the organisation accepting the form wouldn't accept multicopy laser prints for their processes, it had to be on the stationary they supplied!

[@highpath4776]

Indeed Laser might be quicker for some things, but pre printed multipart stationery and a golf ball can whack out quicker if certified etc file copies needed , sometimes paper is better , stores can write on despatch notes etc though apps and scanners seem to be going a way forward

[@IBM_Museum]

"There are a number of converters out there that can display arbitrary video onto HDMI monitors if you can work out the horizontal, vertical and pixel frequency - I think I've seen one based on the Pi Zero on Adrians Digital Basement and Jan Beta's channels. They seem to be able to make sense of even fairly unusual video formats. It might be easier than trying to hack the display card in this device." I also use the 'RGBtoHDMI' that is indeed based on a Pi Zero - Neat devices that sell out quickly...

[@paulmoran7669]

Got the base diskette and a document diskette for that beast. They're yours gratis if you're interested. I have no clue if they're readable after all these decades.

[@PINKBOY1006]

As a total longshot. Have you tried putting paper in it? I've had electronic typewriters do nothing until paper is put in it before.

[@quadraforest]

That would be both ridiculously simple and such a huge relief

[@PINKBOY1006]

@@quadraforest I'm trying to remember the typewriter, but I think it was a brother daisy wheel that just would not type if you didnt pacify it with some kind of paper. it would just kinda sit there and beep with the paper err light lit.

[@adamtheld]

Wow, my parents had this typewriter when I was a kid. I never knew it had a monitor port. I remember that my mom could type a letter and save it to disk without having the typewriter part print it on paper. She could then recall the document from the floppy and print as many copies as she wanted. I don’t remember it needing a boot disk, but I was also about 5 at the time.

[@882952]

In the early 80's I was a Xerox PC repair tech, and I occasionally worked on these! Also there was a newer, sleeker, more plastic-y version that came after, with similar model-naming conventions, except four digits. I think they ranged from 6010 to the 6040. However, by the time they were released, they were already dead and irrelevant.The 600s were built like tanks, the 6000s were built like plastic toys.

[@JamesPotts]

At a previous job, they had an old Rolm phone system that required booting off floppies. They were really paranoid about those disks.

[@mndlessdrwer]

I love how silly Xerox was back in the day. Like, they just overbuilt things because they could. And most of those products, even with that kind of expense, didn't lose them money because people, at the time, were willing to pay the premium for Xerox products due to their reliability.

[@samuelcolvin4994]

Overbuilding is a way of life and a legacy, if your product isn't designed to outlast you, how will you build a legacy(

[@mndlessdrwer]

@@samuelcolvin4994 “A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit” -anonymous Greek proverb. And so it was with Xerox. They gave us so many concepts that other companies developed into fully fledged products but they, themselves, failed to succeed in those market segments in the long-term. WYSIWYG text editors, the precursor to MS Paint using vectors, track ball and optical mice, and several other key computing technologies were either outright invented by Xerox or were refined by Xerox into usable products for demonstration and testing purposes. While Steve Jobs and Bill Gates may have put in a tremendous amount of work to have their companies bring those concepts to fruition, the ideas all came from the same place.

[@owenvogelgesang7314]

That spellcheck module is eerily similar to the official IBM spell check module for the Wheelwriter series. Intel 8031AH, lots of rom, only thing missing is the IBM one has a battery-backed user-programmable dictionary instead of whatever solution they're using.

[@256byteram]

That was fun. You'll find too the clock going to the 6845 only sets the dot clock. The counters in the CRTC determine the horizontal and vertical sync frequencies, which are set in registers by the ROM. Usually the dot clock is divided by 8 for the character clock, and that is used to count the horizontal counter, which then counts the vertical counter.

[@stevec00ps]

My dad saved one of these from his work in the 90s and I used it to do a lot of my home work on! The whole house shook when it printed out :)

[@davidtuomi8361]

18mhz was the clock for the old SD widescreen video. I would expect this uses an odd resolution probably to get more than 80 columns.

[@nickwallette6201]

My guess is it just runs at a higher refresh to avoid flicker.

[@davidtuomi8361]

That's possible too. Probably 72hz since it' goes into 18 4 times and the divider circuits would be easier.

[@0toleranz]

For xerox it wouldn’t surprise me if it was a portrait monitor to display a whole page but unlikely by the format of the video showing. 18 MHz can also be used to produce a 720 by 348 resolution like Hercules did. This would require a slightly higher pixel clock.

[@renakunisaki]

I wonder if that VGA adapter can tell us exactly what format/clocks it's getting?

[@Stoney3K]

@@0toleranz Very possible since Xerox used portrait monitors for their Alto computers.

[@GilbertGonzalez-v7c]

I have the diablo printer version of this typewriter. The printer is a daisy wheel, letter quality prints, without the keyboard, and plugged into a Xerox 820 or 16/8 cpm/ ms-dos computer. This printer also, could print a Pie Chart. It used the Period to tap in the black image.

[@TedSeeber]

I recognize that sync! That's an interlaced signal!

[@matthewfeurtado8921]

I picked one of these up from recycling ages ago. Never got more than a little movement from it. I ended up saving the full daisy wheel mechanism to make a printer with a new controller. I also saved the boards because they just looked cool

[@kdietz65]

Fun story ... my childhood dream was to build my own typewriter. I thought I could do it with electromagnets somehow. I knew the first thing I was gonna need is some copper wire (to make the electromagnets obviously), so I trucked on off to the hardware store and asked the clerk for some wire. He asked me what gauge I needed and I said I didn't know. Then he asked me what I was going to use it for. And I was just way too embarrassed to tell him I was trying to build a typewriter, so I just slunked my head and said I needed to think about it a little more and sheepishly walked out.

[@nickbnash]

Loved this video! Thank you for cutting down the stream. This was really really cool. I look forward to seeing more as you make progress with this system.

[@MinhasA]

Thank you so much for this video! We had one of these when I was a kid!!! I've been wondering what brand / model it was to maybe find one. Ours had the screen in the middle which was green. I don't think it had the drives but I was so young I don't think I was aware enough to look on the bottom. I'm really excited that you have this! I remember the coolest thing to me was that it had an eraser ink cartridge to fix mistakes.. and you could type out a bunch of stuff ahead of time on the screen and then print it all at once.. this was before we had our Apple Ii GS

[@IBM_Museum]

My dad was a Xerox dealer and had so many of these around that he rented out! It makes me wonder where all of the parts, diskettes, and manuals that were all over the place at his business went to. I wish I had the presence of mind to save more than I did.

[@kendalljenkins9938]

Great video. I'm unsure why Xerox released this. I assume they leased them like their copiers, but this has most of the components of a PC, yet they limited it to functioning as a typewriter. Xerox released the model 820 PC in 1981, so they certainly had other products available. Although of all the old companies, Xerox is still a huge company, so maybe they obviously knew what they were doing.

[@denniseldridge2936]

It's interesting to read about the histories of these mega-corporations like IBM, Xerox, etc. So many of them are horrifically dysfunctional internally, and they misfire on their product releases far more than you might imagine.

[@belstar1128]

I think back then a lot of people where so uneducated about computers they would rather have a premium typewriter than a pc.

[@WilliamHostman]

without the boot disk, one cannot be certain this was JUST a word processor... some (I have used one, and seen another on one of the retro scene videos) that ran a full up os. The one I got to use booted off ROM drive as B: ... but if a system floppy were in the 3.5" ssdd floppy, it would boot that. It looked like either CP/M or MS-DOS, but all sub-directories were numbers. The ROM drive had only .com files, no .exe nor .bat, and booted to a launcher. Pure text mode, had the CP 437 upper 128.

[@Beany2007FTW]

It's worth noting that spending, let's say, £1500 on a fancy type writer for your typing pool/secretarial staff/etc that they can work with near immediately, with minimal training, is cheaper than spending £2k on a PC and a week's downtime for training and ongoing support.

[@markdecker6190]

That's exactly correct, people just couldn't scale up all at once, they had to do it in stages. We'd always hear the same complaint that they didn't want to give up their manual typewriter/Selectric/whatever so they'd go down kicking and screaming with every new iteration of computer-based tech but then when we'd go back a couple of years later with something new they'd go down kicking and screaming yet again. @@belstar1128

[@MattPilz]

I never realized until going down a similar rabbit hole of floppy+crt typewriters just how much is probably "lost to time" including so many necessary OS disks and documentation. At some point I picked up a 6040 that has a single 3.5" floppy drive and small attachable monochrome CRT. But somewhere in my mess I lost the documentation and there are zero references to it anywhere online, nor any necessary floppy disks. I can insert a random disk and it reads it then ejects it. So I suspect it's a lot like yours and is looking for a particular boot disk. Great job on getting the video out and analyzing all the components either way! I have picked up a few old police terminals (of minimal functionality) and was also surprised to see what they packed in some of them.

[@jkalin196511]

I had one about 25 years ago. The disk drives started to fail so I got rid of it.The monitor was monochrome green. I still have several daisy wheels for it. It could do 10, 12, 15 pitch and proportional spacing.

[@anticat900]

I remember fixing these in the late 80's, I'm sure it came with a screen or at least the ones I saw did? Nver really got to grips with the front panel as symbolic, it was also the part that became brittle and replacements where hard to find. It was huge and cost £1000's when new. It is amazing one has survived till now as it was a way out of date word processing unit in 88.

[@highpath4776]

Were these typewriters a hang over from departmental budgets - Secretary/Typing Pool had a budget, and Data Processing had a budget, and both different management, this way companies could sell to both

[@JamesPotts]

Might also be aimed at those people who didn't want to change. (It's not one of those new-fangled computers, it's a typewriter!)

[@renakunisaki]

I could see them having some ability to function as a terminal, and being sold as an upgrade for people who were used to typewriters or still needed them. "Well this is a typewriter, but it's also a terminal, with spell check!" Though were terminals still a thing at the time this came out? That's a bit before my time so I don't know the exact dates.

[@kristofferrosendahl6719]

I got 645 disks... It is only a wordprocessor. I got one in my collection.

[@mattparker9726]

0:10 "this is very strange." points to a cool computer. Me: What's that giant monitor mutant you have on the desk? That's strange too.

[@parrottm76262]

The President's secretary at my old 90's job had one of these. She used the heck out of it, and she was one of the first to get a replacement PC w/word processing on it, with matching HP laser printer. She loved it.

[@evensgrey]

This thing prompted me to recall some word processing systems my high school had back in the late 1980's. I remember two configurations, one superficially similar to this (although the cases were black) and some that had an additional CRT monitor raised on a small vertical bar. These were in my home room in my third year of high school (NOT junior year, I'm from Ontario, Canada, and in those days high school was 5 years so the freshman/sophomore/junior/senior naming convention doesn't apply), but as my home room was my spare that year, I would be in there for daily attendance and morning announcements and then I was required to be out of there and into the library or cafeteria, so I learned nothing about their use.

[@VorpalGun]

@Techtangents as a fallback option to reforming the big caps on the old mainframes you have (in case they are bad), would replacing it with a modern switching PSU(s) be possible? Or are the voltages too weird? Or maybe the amperage too high?

[@dialupdave6276]

I think he said it was like 43 volts.

[@VorpalGun]

@@dialupdave6276 there are adjustable PSUs from brands like Meanwell. I don't know about that range specifically, but I have seen 10-36 V and similar. A higer range one wouldn't surprise me if it existed as well, there are applications in charging bike battery packs (my electric bike runs on 48 V for example).

[@IBM_Museum]

My dad was a Xerox dealer - and rather ironic that I tried to save away the advanced models he rented out and only was able to get a Wheelwriter. Recently I did a video (no pun intended) of the high-end Wheelwriter with VGA out and the 4865 external 720Kb diskette drive. The 4707 (?) VGA monitor doesn't work ("Yo, Adrian") and I will undoubtedly fix and feature it more. I'll look to see if I have any documentation or parts around from my dad's business...

[@markdecker6190]

FWIW, I worked for Xerox 18 yrs, left in '97. There was a whole series of these original Memorywriter behemoths that I believe were built on Diablo daisywheel printers. They ranged from simple no display electronic typewriters all the up to the 645s with the mini displays. We sold a lot of them but even gave away a lot more. So if you bought a certain model of high end copier or bought a whole fleet of smaller ones we'd "throw in" some Memorwriters into the deal. When I left Xerox I "acquired" one for myself, out of a garbage heap basically that still worked and used it at home for a few years just for fun. Eventually I sold it on a bulletin board. Anyhow, did you ever get a boot disk?

[@TheSlyMouse]

Honestly what a cool stream. Worth a watch. A follow up on this will get an insta click from me lol. Love the excitement

[@jecelassumpcaojr890]

The 6845 is just a bunch of counters. It takes a lot of additional logic to make it generate video, so very different designs used it (both CGA and MDA, for example). On the other hand, PC monitors were popular enough that it is reasonable to expect a 9 pin connector from the 1980s to be compatible with them. It is great that you were able to get usable video.

[@CoreyDeWalt]

Such an interesting machine. So much design and complexity went into this for being just a word processor.

[@Lemon_Inspector]

I feel like saying "boom" before you turn it on is bad luck.

[@thrillscience]

Who makes that clamp-on camera mount you have? I'm trying to find one that can handle a camera that weighs a couple of pounds.

[@mikeall7012]

I remember being in the 5th grade, in the mid 90s and a friend of mine had a much older sister that had one of the 3.5 inch floppy style typewriters for her college "computer." 2 years later my brother went to college and he was required to have a computer.

[@ScarlettStunningSpace]

Even if it can't boot, that's pretty cool you got something out of it.

[@samt4202]

Could you by any chance upload the ROM as you indicated that you would do? I don't see a link for it in the description. Also I suspect that this unit may be running some version of CP/M.

[@candicelaprade4723]

I worked on a Memorywriter in the late 90’s. Mine had a monitor screen that attached on the right back corner.

[@robert8192]

you could probably code up a boot disk so this thing would emulate a VT-100 terminal.. or just about any kind of terminal.. Thats cool

[@timrichter1980]

Or maybe even a Basic interpreter that prints out to paper instead to a screen... could be messy though

[@HelloKittyFanMan.]

"Seek 1; it seeked 2...." It *sought* from 2.

[@8BitNaptime]

Yeah that spell-check module was a thing back then. Computer Chronicles had an episode for a similar thingy that plugged into a PC between the keyboard and PC...

[@belstar1128]

If i was alive and adult back then i would pay a lot of money for that i can't live without spell checkers anymore i get so much hate when i make a typo i am lucky that i was very young in the time before everything got digital.

[@KamuiS]

I have seen you get excited about stuff but when text showed on screen that you initially missed, you were absolutely giddy!!!

[@jacobstevens8519]

i looked up this thing because i saw one in insanely good condition at goodwill today. seems cool

[@Qardo]

Oh. I've seen one of these and I think I even used one. Way...way...way...back in Elementary school lol. My old Elementary school had a lot of old technology stuff. Lol

[@monchiabbad]

Did you check if the drives are single or double sided or density?

[@renakunisaki]

Your typewriter has 128K of RAM, 3 CPUs, and two floppy drives!? Are we sure this wasn't designed by Sega? 😆

[@ct6502c]

It's a full on computer hiding inside a typewriter! 😂

[@GilbertGonzalez-v7c]

Oh wow! Hmmm, I might have the discs to it. I will have to look..... I beleive there is a Blue, Red, White, and yellow discs. Also, this model had a tv small screen on the left side, and the rs 232 is where the screen plugs in. I serviced those machines.

[@wrtlpfmpf]

Actually changing the crystal is not likely to bring you MDA. There are lots of parameters you can set with most CRTCs. It's even likely that Xerox operates it in a mode that is not 80x25. So I wouldn't mess with it, but instead use an oscilloscope to find out what video mode it does. From that you can see if changing the crystal will bring you to anything more common.

[@DVINTHEHOUSEMAN]

This was a fun stream, I hope the disks show up someday or some other disks work with it, would be nice to see it working

[@renakunisaki]

We need to see it run Doom!

[@wilfredpayne433]

Something I have been doing lately is Everytime I come across a device that uses specific drivers, I make sure they get archived somewhere so that when someone finds it 20 years from now and goes "wow that's freaking cool" they have a chance at finding the driver's for it lol...we are responsible for making sure cool devices will be able to get enjoyed by future generations by making sure we archive the required information (manuals, what consumable things are required, part numbers etc) and the software that it requires, along with making sure that any special cables, docks, etc stay with the device as well, it's common here for scrappers to tear down computers and scrap them as medium grade, high grade, RAM, CPU, parts for different prices, RAM for example pays 10 to 12 a pound, older CPU's with gold plated pins can get you 14 a pound, which requires a massive amount of cool usually still functional systems to be scrapped just to get one pound of RAM or CPU's unfortunately 😢 I saw what I'm 99 percent sure was an SGI indy right as it was being thrown onto the belt going up into the steel shredder at the scrap yard... you can't miss them with that color and I wanted to smack the emergency stop and climb up and get that mofo.... truly sad to see

[@heavytanhat]

"S100 Typewriter" is my new favorite ridiculously obscure phrase

[@GeeFunk84]

There was a great disturbance in the Force. Kylo Ren has just sent greetings via a "Hello there!". Sorry, couldn't resist :D Great content, never thought much of these semi-analogue word-processors before.

[@davidew98]

Try having someone check the bios to figure out what type of entry point it’s looking for on the floppy. Also is the floppy drive, single sided, double sided, 360, 1.2, or something weird!

[@branchonequal]

Seems to be single-sided, the capacity was listed somewhere as 158K per floppy. So probably something similar to early IBM single-sided double density.

[@kins749]

Amazing work, so hope you find a disk.

[@mnoxman]

Why do I think this was competition for the WANG stand-alone word processor products?

[@davidkasprzak4135]

This is a cpm based system. Program on left and data on right. You need the specific monitor for the machine

[@Ale.K7]

Hope we can see this working soon!

[@ClaymoreClay101]

Add the start of the video I assumed this was a type writer that had been morphed into a computer, but after watching the video, this device feels more like a computer than was morphed into a type writer.

[@scottjohnson5415]

This was a great typewriter to type on. It was much better than the IBM Selectric memory typewrtier.

[@nynexman4464]

If you can ever find system disks, or figure some other way to boot the thing, most likely you could use an rgb2hdmi to do the video conversion. Adrian's digital basement has featured it a bunch of times and was able to successfully convert some weird video formats.

[@ropersonline]

The problem with a lot of these dedicated word processors was, their manufacturers were often way too stingy with CPU-power and often not great in the display department either. These things were often SLOOOOW. You'd type, and the display would be no help, because it'd catch up to you only later, by which time you'd have moved on if you were any good. So really, the display was only useful for occasional corrections. Given the development cycles and what was available at the time, they would have had to have put then-fairly top of the line-ish CPUs into these, with then-pretty expensive displays to avoid that sluggishness, and they didn't do either, because they were too eager for margins, and that killed usability, and soon made any cheap PC clone from Taiwan a better deal. Call it technological ungenerosity or eighties corporate greed, but crappy CPUs and dodgy displays killed these dead in the marketplace when there _could have, would have_ been a place for these, on easy-of-use grounds -- they just would have needed more Oomph and Usability™.

[@ropersonline]

PS: Having now watched halfway through this video, I take back what I said before, at least with regards to _this_ word processor. Looks like this model could actually have been fast enough, with a decent enough monitor, to be actually usable. Also, looks like this thing was built like a big Benz limo, with a similar price point.

[@monkeywithocd]

"I have passed on so many word processors at thriftstores..." dang am I jealous. I've been wanting to stumble on one (specifically a Smith Corona model) for a long time and just haven't found any. My grandpa kept a journal on one, but unfortunately no one knows what happened to the device. Thankfully we did keep the floppies and they can be read perfectly fine on a PC, and I miraculously found the official software to convert the files into a slightly more standard format on the internet archive, but I just find the idea of one of these really cool. Unfortunately, just like here I'm sure that if I do ever find it I won't find the CRT that goes with it.

[@HelloKittyFanMan.]

Wow, cool that you got video visible on that monitor!

[@0MoTheG]

Spell checking must have been a problem back then. A dictionary on a ROM would be too expensive, on a Tape too slow, HD too expensive, Floppy disk was the only option.

[@gabotron94]

Being a typewriter you would have expected them to put the software for that in ROM

[@ropersonline]

9:06: Looks... discrete component-y. Also, looks... expensive.

[@greggv8]

Is the floppy controller single density only?

[@systemchris]

There's a bunch of 630 disks on eBay currently in the USA

[@terrylutfi8888]

I tried posting two links for ebay items with system disks here but they get deleted

[@davidew98]

Post the item numbers

[@matthewfeurtado8921]

Check the keyboard I think it might be foam and foil and might be why it doesn't respond to any key press on the main keyboard

[@DandyDon1]

The 640, and 645 came with a 1/2 page video monitor. You can do very little without it. Power to the monitor is 16 volts at the connector. The voltage is then increased inside the monitor. BTW These ran circles around the competition IBM.

[@DandyDon1]

Search for the Xerox 800 demo film entitled: XEROX Word Processing Machines & Computers 1975 (Xerox 800 vintage promo film) Also look up Xerox Star, and the Xerox Alto which was the first desktop publishing system in 1972 with a 3-button mouse.

[@DandyDon1]

The 645 "S" is for Spelling, it had a dictionary on a floppy diskette. There was also the 645 "E" version for Ethernet. This also prints bi-directional as it's based on the Diablo 630. Bi-directional print is something no IBM Electronic Selectric Typewriter could ever do. 10, 12, 15 and PS spacing. When you power it on initially it operates in plain old one letter correct at a time typewriter mode. When you touch any of the function keys, it asks for the software boot disk. Take the time to remove the platen and make sure the platen bushings on each side turn freely. When I bought mine used, someone ran it into the ground. Either the stepper motor for the platen is damaged or a SCR on the driver board.

[@HelloKittyFanMan.]

"That's a lot of megahertz." * fractions of megahertz

[@ropersonline]

16:17: The Intel/AMD thing is because there used to be this big federal requirement that there had to be a second source for everything the government would consider buying, to avoid some monopolist holding Uncle Sam over a barrel. From Wikipedia's _second source_ article: "Intel licensed AMD to second-source Intel microprocessors such as the 8086 and its related support components. This second-source agreement is particularly famous for leading to much litigation (...)"

[@stevetodd7383]

The second source requirement thing was because IC fabrication was a bit of a black art in the early days. Fabs would suddenly go to 100% failure rates for inexplicable reasons and, without a second source, there would be no supply at all. Over time the reasons for failure became understood and were weeded out (weird things like a change in the washing powder used to clean the suits) and single supplier source became acceptable.

[@ropersonline]

@@stevetodd7383 That's one interpretation. Another interpretation and side of the story is that monopoly abuse has become much more officially acceptable in the United States. When it was all weird and disruptive pioneers, they needed to be controlled, but now that all the right people have big money invested, any kind of "big government" interference in the great technological kingdoms and fiefdoms (that are more powerful than most governments) is just intolerable.

[@stevetodd7383]

@@ropersonline you need to remember that, in the days of the 8086 etc, there was much more competition in the market for CPU designs. There was no need to prevent a single company from having a monopoly as there was a thriving market for alternatives. It’s only as the competition fell by the wayside and x86 became the de facto standard that this became at all relevant. Even x86 designs weren’t all Intel derived (AMD, Cyrix and others were producing competitive designs long after Intel stopped second sourcing their chips). It was all about ensuring availability, not preventing price gouging as it was all too easy for a company to lock a manufacturer like Intel down to a price or they would go elsewhere. IBM famously got the 8088 for $5 per chip in their contract.

[@kdietz65]

It's stupid. But, with today's world of Raspberry PIs and small LCD monitors, it would be cool if someone made (or some hobbyists could build) a computer/typewriter hybrid. The immediacy of a typewriter is not replicatable any other way with computers. How hard is it to build an impact printer (assuming you can use existing daisy wheels)? You just need some rails and some stepper motors and such, right? It could be done.

[@iroll]

Other than making your own impact printer, it could be done easily (for somebody with the programming skills and time). You could emulate the control protocol for the printer on an Arduino and write a character or line print out. Even easier would be using linux on a pi; after all, lpt stands for "line print terminal."

[@IanSlothieRolfe]

I'd imagine it wouldn't be hard. The striking mechanism would be tricky to tune to get the timing right but its basically a solenoid and a spring to retract it.

[@iroll]

@@IanSlothieRolfe Well, it's that and a linear transport (which could be from a 3d printer), plus a paper feed. But the big question is the daisy wheel... How would you make a new one (3d printing would almost certainly be both too low-res and too soft)? How would you ink it? If the answer to any of the above is "buy new old stock" then the whole thing is basically pointless. At that point if the goal is to make a functioning character or line print terminal you should probably just buy a whole printer and work on interfacing with it. If the goal is really to roll your own printer, well, you can "kind of" do it?

[@kdietz65]

@@IanSlothieRolfe It would be fun to start there. Break the project down into small pieces and try to get one part of it working.

[@kdietz65]

@@iroll Yeah, I know, where does the daisy wheel come from. Keep in mind that I also want to build my own CRT monitor someday, so ... yeah. I guess you'd start by buying an existing daisy wheel and see what you could build around it. Then, if you got that far, try to figure out if you could make your own daisy wheel. Maybe take some hard plastic and CNC out the leafs, and then glue on the type elements. Seems like if you really got that far you could make a daisy wheel. Daisy wheels are pretty abundant though. It's the printers that are a little harder to find. The end goal would be a complete, self-contained computer/typewriter hybrid that you could type on and also run ssh to connect to other computers on the Internet. Yes, I've thought about interfacing with existing printers and typewriters, like maybe building a typing robot. That's kinda how I landed on this video. I also like Tech Tangent videos that discuss using typewriters as computer printers.

[@HelloKittyFanMan.]

"It tries to read the operating system OFF OF those floppy drives"? Oh? Where do you suppose it would be trying to read FROM, then?

[@AndrewGistKlaxMaster]

I wanted to believe that the hp85 had to be newer. I wanted be like, well duh it's smaller and more compact... but no. The memory writer is from 1985, and the HP85 from 1980. Crazy

[@esra_erimez]

"welcome to my S-100 typewriter" 🤣

[@HelloKittyFanMan.]

"Unless someone happens to have one or one shows up on ebay." But wait: Isn't one showing up on ebay already covered by someone happening to have one?

[@ropersonline]

Pic showing the CRT @ 20:41.

[@donaldkormos5529]

I still have my 620 ... and it still works perfectly!!

[@FrankenLab]

Hahahahaha, I used to work for Xerox in 84-85 and this was one of the products I was trained to support. I *hated* it, sorry to say I don't even have a page of documentation or remember anything about it other than it sucked (all the memorywriters). I do remember one customer that had one that I literally replaced every module on and it still didn't work right. EDIT: Hourly pay for an entry level FS Tech back then was $5.45/hr, just found my check stub. A couple year later I went to work for DEC, entry level systems tech was just over $8/hr. Working for DEC was one of the best jobs I ever had.

[@highpath4776]

Had a Juki daisywheel one that was a parallel printer and typewrtier, alas , unless I could hack it not an input keyboard

[@senilyDeluxe]

Xerox: Puts the disk drives UNDER the keyboard, lifting the keyboard up uncomfortably Meme man: URRGONOMMIKS I found a Philips VideoWriter with an awesome half height amber CRT on the curb. It didn't come with disks and is incompatible to everything else on the planet, but you can format disks from the ROM BIOS, so it doesn't become bricked if you lose the disks. And the monitor uses 15kHz composite so you could snip the internal cable and hook it to a DVD player.

[@AndyHullMcPenguin]

Maybe try a PC bios? I guess there are two processors, because one controls the "printer" and the other runs the "user interface" Back in the day Xerox did a range of "Mini" type computers which were often used for word processing with models like the Xerox 850 (these things were huge). This may be a derivative of one of those. They did indeed have their own operating system, in the case of the 850, it came not on 5 1/4" disks, but on 8" ones. I actually worked on one back in the day for a local insurance broker. Nobody else locally would look at the thing because it was ancient, even then, but I got it services and running. That would have been in the late 1980s or early 1990s.

[@Stoney3K]

The wide hole on the back where the blank panel was makes me wonder if a Centronics port or a serial port were also an option.

[@DamianMontero]

that was fantastico!

[@HelloKittyFanMan.]

"Thrift stores and Goodwills"? Huihh? Isn't Goodwill a thrift store? What would you call it?

[@allanfulton7569]

I actually had one of these in the early 90s

[@davidkasprzak4135]

As the monitors died the repair tech converted the, to regular typewriter

[@davidkasprzak4135]

I still use mine and have all the disks and books

[@peters7413]

For a long time I was screaming...... Put paper in ittttttttt....... Maby there was an paper switch 🙃

[@HelloKittyFanMan.]

Yes, of course Type Right is a spell checker; that's why it's "RIGHT" instead of "write"! Durhr, hehe.

[@DEMENTO01]

this reminded me of my olivetti cwp1 word procesor, it literally is a pc but with a dot matrix printer built in, single 3 1/4" floppy but has like an option to put another one? i guess its for a higher end model, also has all the os in eeproms which i cant dump bc i dont have a fancy eeprom programer and ive been wanting one because i might be the only one who has one of these and gives a fuck lmao. Also it has an unpopulated, easily accessible eeprom socket and afaik its for an upgrade either spell check or whatnot i think It's really neat tbh, problem is that i have no idea which format it uses on the floppies, i cant image anything it does and when i format on ms dos, the cwp1 can still access the files it created on it, also i think i should have a disk that came w it bc everytime i format a disk it asks for a disk of some sort but i dont have it but it still wokrs? idek. Weird stuff tbh. Got it for idk how much but it wasnt much, had to do some cleaning and fixing brittle plastic and i have the CRT which uses a weird circluar connector and i also have the original anti-dust cover ! which is gross btw. I could get some new old stock ink cartidges to replace the very heavily used one i had and i still have an unopened one with its box and everything ! its one of my fav things tbh, Afaik the software was last updated on this unit on 1983 i think? but the hardware is a bit older afaik. Anyway, nowhere near as cool as this one tbh but wanted to share my random facts about this other word processor thingy bc i know of no one else who even thought of them rip

[@DAVIDGREGORYKERR]

You missed of the t and should be XEROX 645ST Memorywriter.