The HP ThinkJet: First Consumer Inkjet Printer

[@bdot02]

From my dad who worked on this: Oh my, such great memories. I was one of the designers for the ThinkJet printer. We created a whole new category of printers. First inkjet printer in the world. The 2225D was RS232. I managed the project, created the interface board, wrote all the firmware for the RS232 board - truly a 1 man ptoject.

[@rawr51919]

You're one lucky soul to have family lineage who worked on this! Still a pretty good printer for what it is today

[@gorak9000]

My dad had one or 2 of these printers in the late 80's early 90's. I'm pretty sure I remember some combination of the buttons allowed you to feed the paper backwards to get the top of the form just where you needed it. Somewhere I still have 2 printers, and probably the original manual for them.

[@gorak9000]

I think maybe when it's offline (the red light is on or off - I forget now) you hold the blue button and press the LF button and it feeds backwards? Or it feeds in really tiny increments or something? There was definitely something with some button combination that I discovered at some point reading the manual that made aligning the paper much easier.

[@2010stoof]

Wow that's awesome!!

[@bouchert]

There was a story told to me when I worked in HP's inkjet division. Over time, the plan was always to eventually contract out the production of older ink cartridges once the demand got low enough, to free up manufacturing capacity for newer lines. So they tracked the sales of the original ThinkJet print head as it predictably tapered off. But then, suddenly, it began to increase again. Looking for the cause, they discovered, amongst other applications, it had been utilized in a children's toy (I forget what, but I think it was similar to a Magna Doodle or Etch-a-Sketch) with a hardcopy print function. HP missed a huge licensing opportunity there. But it was thanks to how simple the first cartridges were. Later ones are considerably more complex and contain logic you might even call DRM, but the first ones were a pretty basic system that apparently even a toy company could figure out.

[@evefavretto]

But is it a cloned mechanism or an HP TIJ 1.0 mechanism sold by HP to that company?

[@Intelwinsbigly]

So the system was great because it isn't a locked down pos.

[@nyccollin]

Etch-A-Sketch has never had hyphens anymore. Mandela Effect.

[@CH32mix]

HP then: this ~40yo printer still works HP now: you need an HP account to print anything

[@zaprodk]

And subscription and expiry date on your ink 🤮

[@IanC14]

@@zaprodk errr, ink has an expiry date because it can expire. You don't need to subscribe

[@zaprodk]

@@IanC14 correct. But it doesn't stop working just because the printer means that it's too old. That's what I'm referring to. Also HP offers ink on subscription. This thread was about talking about how crazy things were today, which you might have misunderstood :)

[@amirpourghoureiyan1637]

DRM on ink cartridges is the worst thing they introduced.

[@zaprodk]

@@amirpourghoureiyan1637 Yeah but since they are selling the actual printer at a loss, they designed their sales model around it. But that is not what makes me most angry. It's not only the expiry dates as well, it's the regional locking of the ink AND the printer. The same ink and printer can be bought much cheaper in a country with a weak economy, and not be used in a corresponding product in another area. It's crazy.

[@mos6581com]

The progenitor of a cursed, evil lineage.

[@BilisNegra]

We're talking crazy steep ink price tags I guess?

[@dangerotterisrea]

Needs putting in a wicker Man!! Thirsty creatures

[@j2simpso]

How fitting that the first inkjet printer was Dot Matrix, foreshadowing the matrix all consumers would be entering in the coming years with steep ink prices and unreliable printing mechanisms.

[@resneptacle]

@@BilisNegra Just InkJet printers being upper garbage, plus, yes, high ink prices

[@semifavorableuncircle6952]

HP didnt yet include its trademark unreliability in that one, but they sure did later. I have thrown more than one HP ink-pisser from a roof.

[@oliviamay]

We're contacting you about the extended warranty on your HP Thinkjet.

[@singletona082]

In spite of both never having owned a car and having no legal capacity to drive due to my vision? I get those calls constantly.

[@oliviamay]

@@singletona082 i at least have a license, but no car haha. That's unfortunate my dude

[@tarstarkusz]

GREAT NEWS!!!! The FCC exercised the "nuclear option" and has threatened that any carrier that allows fake spoofed caller-id robocallers will be kicked off of the American telephone system. No access to the backbone. This went into effect on July 1. We'll see if they really start enforcing the goddamned law.

[@rtperrett]

1:34 first inkjet printer looks like a dot matrix printer.

[@LusRetroSource]

I'm imagining a sweet grandma still using this printer and still being able to order cartridges for it. Pretty cool.

[@markshultz5032]

Ironically, my grandmother used to have a Canon BJ-300, which was the Canon version of this printer. An inkjet (although they called it a bubble jet) printer with the mind of a dot matrix printer. Interestingly enough though, the Canon design used an ink tank with a fixed print head, similar to what Epson uses.

[@johnmiller0000]

I recognised that immediately. I used one of these for my PhD studies. There are 80 pages of Turbo Pascal code printed on a ThinkJet in my thesis. I just checked it and the letters are as wobbly as you found.

[@MattKasdorf]

D'oh, you should have mentioned you were looking, I've got one sitting right beside me. Keeping the "lid" down actually helps to keep the paper in place.

[@amirpourghoureiyan1637]

Thought that was the case, he probably winged it since it got in the way of filming.

[@omni-shadow-topiaakaconrad2009]

i love seing first generation device like this

[@joeyscleaninglady2877]

i had one of these back in the 80s as well as one of those pen plotters. The plotter specifically was amazing to watch when plotting a drawing

[@MrBillmcminn]

HP made a colour version called the PaintJet

[@bfs5113]

I only have the HP Deskjet 500C. 🙂

[@KC9UDX]

@@bfs5113 I have one of those too. 🙂

[@paulmichaelfreedman8334]

My first inkjet was an Epson Stylus color II. the color ink was useless on normal paper as it had a huge bleed, so it needed special paper. But the 720 dpi was the highest of the time and produced pretty nice images for the time.

[@KC9UDX]

@@paulmichaelfreedman8334 my first colour printer was a citizen 24 pin dot matrix. Fine for printing one colour at a time. But minced the paper printing two or more.

[@nickpalance3622]

I had a Paintjet back in the day. The local computer store had one and I just had to have it. $1000. Hmmm… Paintjet or $ for my first car? Well, now that I’ve spent money taking driving lessons and passed the road test, time to spend on my computer and technology habit! Prom? Girls? I’ll have to see how much money I have left over. 🤑 The Paintjet replaced a Star color dot matrix. I know all too well what printing color graphics on a dot matrix is like. Need to make a pass for each color on the ribbon. And the weird noise it makes as the print cartridge/ribbon adjusts to each color. Oh heck, just the sound of the impact printing! I made a banner for an event in high school and with each letter being a full page it took all night. It was loud all night. I barely slept. If only I had the Paintjet before my senior year. But I had to get my Amiga 2000 first. The Paintjet took a special “clay coated” Z-fold paper. Try regular paper and ink bleed!! The Paintjet was also annoying to load. Tearing off a printout meant wasting a sheet of the pricey proprietary paper. You had to have the cover over the print area closed as it opened inwards and blocked the print head. But once you advanced the paper to tear off, while I could get the paper to go back and line up at the top of the page, there was the issue that the top of a new clean sheet not already attached to more that were already on the outside would not follow the path properly beyond the roller. Wanted to go straight up and smack the dust cover. I don’t miss that aspect. Back to the Thinkjet, there was a consignment used section at the same local computer shop and somebody had a Thinkjet for sale. Don’t remember the asking price. But I remember seeing this thing back then.

[@chriswareham]

I had a HP DeskJet 500 that I think was their first "modern" consumer inkjet. It was ancient when I got it, and thanks to miscommunication about when I'd collect it from the former owner it sat out in the rain for several days. Still worked fine after a clean, and after years more service I passed it on to someone else. Pretty much indestructible!

[@tarstarkusz]

9:20 those chips are probably roms holding things like the power on self-test, cleaning program and fonts. Many early HP printers even had cartridge slots for font upgrades, though these were usually for laser printers. But in reality, there is no reason they couldn't do that here. HP did make laserjet printers with cartridge slots. IIRC, my HP 500 inkjet printer had a cartridge slot.

[@MichaelWeaser]

They also make the ink cartridge in red as well (HP 51605R) and use to make a blue cartridge too (HP 51605B), and also Canon rebranded this ink cartridge as the CJ-3A for their various printing calculators. This printer was also rebranded as the Kodak Diconix 150 printer, the only difference it had a different shell.

[@RM_Nimbus_Museum]

The first consumer inkjet was a rather more complex affair and essentially jointly 'first' by both HP and Canon with their BJ-80. The understanding being that they were entirely separately invented at the same time but diverged towards the end via a series of litigation and design agreements. Both products released at the same time in 1985.

[@abhimaanmayadam5713]

that looks like the printer cartridge found on some old non thermal credit card printers. I wouldn't be surprised if that is the reason why it still lives today;

[@evefavretto]

And check printers, at least here. One store specifically sells the 51604A cartridge as a "check printer cartridge"

[@paulmichaelfreedman8334]

Likely used in industrial processes too, like egg printers that print the date on them. Such machines can be way older than 35 years, so the cartridge still being available isn't very surprising. The industry is still a huge customer for them. If this was only a consumer device cartridge, it would have sold out a long time ago. Also large format printers (designjets among many others) practically guarantee long lasting supply of certain inkjet print heads and ink as they also can be used for many tens of years without becoming obsolete.

[@damiworld]

The coolest ending to a video I think I'll ever see.

[@SeanJr018]

Without a doubt it should be the ending from now on, but i know that would be a lot of typing to do lol.

[@TechTangents]

If you mean 28:37 where I print out the names I've actually been doing that for every video for about a year now. There is a tier on my Patreon page where anyone can get added to the printout: www.patreon.com/AkBKukU

[@RandomInsano2]

You should also look up Strongbad Emails

[@BilisNegra]

@@TechTangents Maybe not a subscriber... Or just pointing out how satisfying it was to watch the supporter page being printed on the ThinkJet!

[@cyprusgrump]

I used to sell these for an HP dealer (so mostly the HP-IB 'A' version)... I remember being hugely excited when the first one came into stock - it replaced a HP badged version of an Epson FX-80 with a HP-IB plug-in card... Of course then they sold the printer for a profit and the paper and cartridges as accessories... Now they practically give away the printer and make money on the cartridges... The ThinkJet was of course followed by the hugely successful LaserJet!

[@kbhasi]

Cool! I remember CuriousMarc did a video on the HP-IB interface version of that printer, so it's cool to see you doing a video on the parallel port version of the same printer!

[@thedungeondelver]

HP Depreciated this model in 1994, so it was still quite supported for desktop use when 98 was released (I mean, of course, there's the driver for it, but I think you know what I mean).

[@NJRoadfan]

It likely has drivers because it uses PCL commands. Just a matter of some tweaks of a LaserJet or DeskJet driver and bam, printing on a ThinkJet.

[@juanignacioaschura9437]

Deprecated is the word

[@thedungeondelver]

@@juanignacioaschura9437 *Thank* you. I always make that typo!

[@capybaratech377]

My first printer was HP Deskjet 610C, it became known at the office as "The suicide Printer". It shake so violently from side to side that the table screws came loose and the whole setup came down to the floor, computer and everything. But dont worry, Even upside down on the floor, it kept going printing until the end of the page. A very brave and clunky printer. In whatever recycling center you are now, God bless you.

[@RetroTechChris]

Oh the joys of tractor loading! I had a Kodak Diconix 180si back in the day, I think the mechanism was nearly identical... and it was a portable printer! Anyway, it was great to see that the repair was easy... reminds me of a laptop CD-ROM I fixed yesterday... opened it up and it just had a loose ribbon cable, ha! As always, thanks for a great video and walkthrough of this device. Cheers!

[@mobamoba8939]

From 1984 to still working on today just one word WONDERFUL and good presentation and especially at the end with credit 👍🏻

[@JARVIS1187]

I was hoping you'd use that printer for the Patreons at the end and you did in fact not disappoint me! I was even the first one

[@mikesradios]

Minor point, the "printer" text on the label is part of the UL listing mark, it would be the certification category. Other devices might say "AV Equipment" or something along those lines.

[@henrikjohnsson3407]

Got less than fond memories of those. Mostly used the ones with GPIB interface in lab settings for getting hardcopy from oscilloscopes, logic analyzers and such. Don't think I ever got a printout that wasn' missing lines from clogged nozzles. Siemens also launched some inkjets at about the same time, basically replacing the printhead on a typical dot matrix printer. Sold fairly well I believe. I worked at Siemens in the summer of '85, one of my tasks was maintenance on their PT88S model. By maintenance I mean going out to customers, replacing the printhead and sending the old one to the factory for refurbishment.

[@RandomInsano2]

I had also been considering picking one of these up to play with. Thanks for covering it! I think I’ll stick with my HP IIIp for now.

[@dbozan99]

I love the way that the dithered graphics look.

[@dirkbilgram717]

Thank you for bringing back some old memories! Great video - although my experience with that printer was quite a bit different than yours. I brought a used one home from a computer flea market before Christmas in 1990. I was amazed by its compact size and its stylish design. But, I also remember the paper hassle, wobbly letters and especially smearing. I was so annoyed that I sold it just after new year and returned to my noisy, but reliable, 9 pin matrix printer.

[@craigm.9070]

Thanks for posting this video! This printer takes me back a bit...I was working in a liquor distribution warehouse back then and they used these...can I say wow, I remember the office personnel were always fired up mad at these. A trip down memory lane!

[@bobroberts2371]

Years ago I read an article about the first consumer level HP ink jet printer. Supposedly the engineering manager/ project manager promiced the team hamburgers if they developed a working printer by X date. While they were able to make an operational printer by the date, apparently the burgers never arrived. The printers internal test page supposedly includes text stating " Ed owes us burgers. " Apparently this was carried over to the next few models as well.

[@bdot02]

Would love to read that article if you ever find it again.

[@amazulu3401]

Fixed many of these as a field engineer in the UK in the 80s. Seem to remember the main circuit board has loads of screws holding it in for rfi. The right hand tractor feed moves so that the printer can take AQ and A4 paper. Great little printer, very reliable.

[@amazulu3401]

It was primarily designed to print on thinkjet paper which was high quality, very expensive.

[@MattBielman]

Wow, hearing that "dah-dah-DA-DA-dah" init sound again brought back a LOT of great memories! Thanks for keeping this old hardware alive and sharing it with the world.

[@SteveMorton]

Quite a few years since I've seen one of these. We used them at work with HP85 and similar controllers and other HP-IB instruments. They really built things to last back then! The DIP switches are to set the HP-IB address

[@rawr51919]

This is a parallel version, the dip switches set different stuff depending on the model and what it connected to at the time

[@apl175]

This was used in many public libraries in the USA in the late 80s and 90s due to their quietness - usually connected to an XT or AT class computer that had several CD-ROM drives . The print outs were needed for citations - either OCLC or WorldCat (or their combined product One Search).

[@billharris6886]

I used the ThinkJet printers all the time during the 1980's and 1990's with the HPIB bus to print the screen view of HP test equipment (typically a spectrum analyzer). Prior to this printer, we had to use a Polaroid camera made especially for photographing the screen. Resolution was about twice that of a 9 pin dot matrix printer but, these were much quieter. Loading this printer was about the same trouble as loading most any tractor feed printer. These printers used special HP chemically treated paper to make the ink show up better, with regular paper, the printer quality is very light. Reliability of these printers was very good.

[@JVHShack]

Shelby's back in form! Great video!

[@johnprouty6583]

I remember seeing the prototypes at an HP Labs open house in the 80s at the Page Mill facility. When they were finally on the market it could be found on just about any desk with a computer, which unfortunately back then was the HP 150. The HPIB (yeah, ok IEEE488 or GPIB) version was also used with test equipment. It was a real workhorse. They usually were reliable, but when they messed up they really earned their nickname of “stink jet”.

[@erwinvb70]

I just got the same printer, if you keep the LF button pressed while powering on, it will print a test page when you then release the button. When buying a new cartridge there should be a new piece of paper to put in the holder in the printer (where it was tearing the paper), just put the shining part of that piece toward the back and the matte side towards the printer head, so it can absorb ink of the cleaning sprays

[@DavidWonn]

23:32 Biggest excuses of the era: 1. "The dog ate my homework" and 2. "The ThinkJet ate my number 5"

[@notsofastener]

@TechTangents The Radio Shack/Tandy CGP-220 inkjet printer may actually have predated the HP ThinkJet by at least a year. The CGP-220 was actually made by Canon and it was a color inkjet printer. It had a permanent piezoelectric print head and separate black and CMY ink cartridges that got pierced by what looks like hyperemic needles. I know the printer went on sale in the USA through Radio Shack in 1984, but the Canon branded model was likely a year or more earlier in the Japanese market. This might be something you want to look into if you like early inkjet printer technology, especially for the unique way it prints (hint, not really a matrix printer).

[@CossieChris]

For tractor feeding, like old Epson dot matrix printers, you need to load tractor fed paper with the first page passed through, with the top of the second page aligned with the top of the print head. You lose a page of paper but the page will print with the correct margins. This is because the tractor is after the print head. Apples Imagewriter II has the tractor behind the print head so doesn't have that problem.

[@JamieOrlando]

I used to have a Commodore MPS-1270 inkjet printer that used those cartridges. They were also compatible with the Kodak Diconix. I wish I still had that printer, it was kind of fun. I used the "Epson X Old" driver in Amiga OS to print to it which worked perfectly.

[@wearwolf2500]

This is giving me flashbacks. I was using a thermal printer at work for a bit and it just loved to feed paper after you printed something. *Print 1 line* "Well clearly you also want 3 blank pages with that one line". Although I think in that case the problem was it wasn't detecting the marks on the paper indicating where pages ended.

[@pkhoury1212]

Great video. Interesting note on the carriage return + LF option. I recently got two Kodak Diconix 150 Plus printers working, which use the same print engine. I had issues with the ThinkJet driver inserting line feeds between lines, so I'll try changing that option and seeing if it works any better. Uses the same cartridges, though I feel the ThinkJet is a bit faster. One of the problems sadly with ThinkJets I've owned in the past is that ink cartridges have been left in the carriers for decades, destroying the flex cable/contacts that connect to the print head, so the printer doesn't print the full character, or at all. My first memory of these was in a public library in the early 90s and I thought it was a dot matrix then, but astoundingly quiet, until I later learned it was the first mass produced inkjet printer. Thank you for this awesome video.

[@2011joser]

I remember the wobbly print was common on the first inkjets. Even when doing fonts, it took some years for the lower priced ones to produce crisp letters.

[@NJRoadfan]

The Kodak Diconix 100 series appears to use the ThinkJet cartridges. Those were in production for far longer then the ThinkJet was and many are still in use!

[@davidp7414]

We used to take these in the field where I work (rs232). I threw away about 10 of these a few years ago. Now I am sad!

[@BeigeAlert]

We had two of these in the lab back in the later 90s. One was RS-232, the other parallel, eventually we retired the instrument one was used with and then the other printer broke and I ended up getting one of those parallel/serial converter boxes to use the working printer (I don't remember which way around the conversion had to go. Some good old plastic box with its own 5V power brick and a bunch of dip switches.) We still had real analog chart recorders back then! We'd get chromatograms both ways, old-style pen chart recorder and new-fangled printed out!

[@ms-dosman7722]

Printer printing a picture of itself: Printception!

[@paulmichaelfreedman8334]

Should have been ASCII art to finish it off.

[@lennaertedens4624]

I used the printer to print the printer

[@dashtesla]

Imagine if the printer had a little more intelligence it would be amazed by it :D

[@DJPhantomRage]

I have two of these, with Northern Telcom printed on them. One is DC and the other has it's own power supply built in. I actually still use one of them today on a network print server. The other old device i have from Nortel is a Display Phone Plus,

[@envisionelectronics]

I worked for Diconix/Kodak from 2005-2012 and I had a small army of Diconix 150 running experimental inks. Same cartridge but the printer itself was also battery powered.

[@trs80model14]

I had one circa 1985 with a parallel port interface. I recall a box of the carts cost about $90 and they plugged easily.

[@CraigPetersen12f36b]

I found a NOS HP 2225A on eBay a number of months ago. Mine has the HPIB interface and I purchased it solely to be used in my ATM system with my HP 5371A Frequency and Time Interval Analyzer and my HP 71110C spectrum analyzer. I have been using 20# fan fold paper but I am getting a little bit of smearing as it prints, guessing that the paper is a smidge too thick.

[@richshealer3755]

The original paper from HP was clay coated and made the print sharper. Paper was stiffer as well.

[@doctordapp]

For a loose metal axle or peg in plasric I usually scorch the piece that sticks in with a cutting plier in 2 crosses, it will never come loose then.

[@erikmagnuson9670]

The output looked better if you used the special HP coated paper. This paper had slightly more absorption and “connected” the dots for smoother looking output. Or use the bold font for darker text. The HP paper was also micro-perfed and had a very clean tear on the sides and between sheets.

[@zaxxon4]

I had gotten one of those a little over 25 years ago, and threw it away. When I powered it on, the cartridge in it proceeded to empty all of its ink as the head moved from one side to the other. As for the age of yours, the date codes on the chips place them in late 1984. The big chip has the second line showing 8438 which is 1984 38th week. The HP chips both show 84305 which is non-standard, but probably 1984 30th week.

[@richshealer3755]

The original ThinkJet print-heads required a special clay coated paper. HP part number 92261N. Regular paper would let the ink spread. I've read that the newer ones are formulated for regular paper. There was a fourth model, the 2225P, that was a battery powered with a parallel interface. It was introduced a couple of years after the other three. The last customer I did ThinkJet repairs was the US Navy. It fit in a specific spot on their ships. It was around 1999 and HP no longer had parts, so I bought used ones from eBay for donners. The paper work required for billing sucked.

[@kimholm4607]

Fun fact - the cpu used in the ThinkJet is the Saturn - the one in the 71B. The LG7 and LG8 chips you can see are 4 bit-wide RAM & ROM

[@pleasantgoose]

What you need to repair that post may just be an E-style clip ring. You can get a variety pack very inexpensively. It should easily fit around the backside of the pin you have left over. I could be completely wrong however, and the pin may not even clear the backside of the hole.

[@MrPhobart]

It’s been about 40 years since I used one but on the parallel printers I used then the dip switches were used to make the printer emulate a different model in case there wasn’t a driver for this one. And some may be to control the default font and effects like bold and italic.

[@jp-ny2pd]

I had one of those 20-years ago in high-school. They worked great, but yeah, those early ink cartridges were NOTORIOUS for leaking and drying out in the head.

[@plazmasyt]

I misread the name as "Thinklet" and now I'm sorely disappointed IBM never did that. Edit: I'm also dumb for assuming it was an IBM thing because the ThinkJet name is so similar to the IBM ThinkPad name. c:

[@tarstarkusz]

IBM made outstanding printers.

[@Juanguar]

I guess we could say That you’re a brainlet ? I’ll show myself out

[@amirpourghoureiyan1637]

Funny that up until the 90s, the ThinkPad was just a notepad from the employee merch. If IBM were the ones to introduced this, they would've used a boring 51** name - they started putting some personality in their products after the PCjr and PS/1.

[@paulmichaelfreedman8334]

@@tarstarkusz Also cost 10 times more, so were only viable in larger investments. HP made/makes printers in a larger price range. Worth noting, ALL (and I mean every single one of them) laserjet printers, have Canon developed engines. Any HP part you see ending with CN (which is about 99% of them) is sourced from Canon.

[@tarstarkusz]

@@paulmichaelfreedman8334 They were more, but not 10x more. All laser printers were very expensive back in the day. Even the relatively low end ones were $1000 or more. What about the early HP printers? Were they based on Cannon as well, presumably their copiers? Like I'm talking LaserJet, LaserJet II and III. Because there was a pretty major change from III to 4

[@massmike11]

I worked at a clinic and we had one of these hooked up to an HP3000 mini that we ran the clinic on. We used it for diagnostic reporting on the 3000

[@richlovin2173]

I have to grin. I worked at HP Corvallis near where the Inkjet was born. I had a clear plastic one and saw many other colors in the lab. Enjoy it. It was a good first step.

[@byrons8956]

Man, I haven’t seen these in a LONG time, I use to have to work on these when I was doing hardware support in the day.

[@stagggerlee]

Had a fleet of those in service until the late 90's in a library system. Quiet and amazingly fast. Ours were rs232. I had one still new in box when I left in 12. We quit using them because we moved from dumb terminals to pc, ink was getting harder to find. There was not great precision, but quiet and quick.

[@stagggerlee]

I used to buy only hp printers, now I will not buy hp. Anything else but not hp.

[@underbird]

Was using one of these at work to print test reports from an HP network analyzer up until about 2012 or so.

[@HiFiasco]

My family bought one of these used through the newspaper classifieds to replace our finicky color dot matrix. In a way it was a step down but it came with the prestige of ink jet ownership 😂. It had some kind of proprietary brand label covering up the thinkjet moniker on the cover so it took forever to figure out what driver to use in windows 3.1 aside from generic/text only. Glamorous.

[@KrisRyanStallard]

I've used that baking soda and super glue trick on lots of random things. Thank you!

[@TastyBusiness]

I want to see the PET printer adapter you mentioned.

[@braelinmichelus]

It may be laughable by today's standards, but when it was new... _Far_ quicker, _higher_ quality, and _much_ quieter than a common variety dot matrix of the time... it would have simply been brilliant! Amazed everyone upon first viewing!

[@BEdmonson85]

This thing reminds me of an "inkjet" printer that I used while working at a very well known defense contractor that'll remain nameless here. It was used to label wires and or cables with their id numbers. It used a single stream of ink that was pulsed and steered via high voltage plates to print the characters in a dot-matrix format. An incredible machine when it was working properly, but when maintenance was required it was a nightmare to deal with. The ink that was used to mark those wires was some kind of super permanent ink; acetone wouldn't touch it and it got everywhere!

[@tilmanahr]

I think the continuous-stream type of Inkjet printers were actually available, even as “regular” printers, before the dot matrix-style Piezo and Bubblejet ones (like the HP and Canon (BubbleJet) or Epson (Piezo)) were developed. IIRC, they were relatively expensive, somewhat fickle and potentially messy, but quite fast. I seem to recall an article in an 80s Commodore Magazine aimed at pro users that compared the (then new) piezo/BJ printers to the older-style continuous-stream ones (and probably dot matrix- and daisywheel-impact printers)… Also IIRC, the piezo-type printheads came to market earlier than bubblejet, but I’m not sure on that at all.

[@BEdmonson85]

@@tilmanahr Seems plausible to me, the software that ran the printer I described was DOS based. We used an old IBM clone running Windows 3.1. I wish I had a picture it was a pretty cool machine.

[@static-san]

There is something wonderful about HP tech from that time. And I do believe the slightly wonky dots is unique to the ThinkJet - I don't think any other ink jet printer did that. It was an artifact of how the print head worked, specifically that it was upright firing at the paper like an impact printer. They largely fixed this for the PaintJet which also had an upright print position but then they devoted effort to the DeskJet line where the printhead printed down towards the paper.

[@BrainboxccGames]

00:28:56 why is the number 5 missing from the character dump? That's gonna bug me...

[@DoRC]

I love those screw kits. Whenever I need a screw that I don't have instead of buying one or two of them at the hardware store I just buy the entire kit of that type on Amazon. Nowadays I have screws for just about any application.

[@pigpenpete]

Had loads of these at the last place i worked, what, 5 years ago? All HPIB variants. I was constantly surprised by the availability of ink cartridges for them! Even if they did constantly clog up and make a mess everywhere.

[@j2simpso]

Great video as always! Just thought I'd point something out regarding paper-sizes that you may be unaware of. The present US-letter size of paper we are all familiar with did not become a standard dimension for the paper until Reagan made it the standard for government documents. Prior to this, it was 8.5 by 10 inches. Whilst that may not sound like a huge difference, it would explain why the printer is sucking your paper about a half-inch in more than it should be. Hopefully, this is something that can be addressed in the dip switches you mentioned on the video.

[@static-san]

I'm pretty sure one of the things the DIP switches set was paper size.

[@aviphysics]

I used one not much after this one back in the day. Parent's worked for HP and they were given one to use in their home office. I am pretty sure one of the wheels is intentionally free to move back and forth.

[@flecom5309]

I remember using the serial version of these attached to Wyse terminals at my local library

[@cesarnieves6884]

My Mother worked at HP and we had one when I was in elementary school. I was actually the only kid that was able to show up with printed projects.

[@avsystem3142]

I purchased one of these when they were first introduced to use with my Amiga 2000. It cost $2,000. I actually still have both the printer and the Amiga (in storage). I had no idea that ink would still be available. It used a parallel interface so some type of converter would be required to use it with a modern PC and, in any event, I have faster, better, cheaper color printers.

[@compu85]

Did the ThinkJet make it to market before the Canon PJ piezo inkjet printers? I’d love to have one of these too, they’re so quiet and small!

[@s-phere]

great video -- i have been considering a dot matrix for a while, but the wobbly character of this inkjet variant is right up my alley! i've got a massive RISO printer from '91 that has me very interested in this era of printing. really, it's a digital duplicator that behaves like a lithograph machine. i think you would be interested in these, but they are ridiculously large and heavy. they were mostly sold in churches in the US during the 90s -- that's where mine came from. the ink transfer is done thru massive drums with big silkscreens wrapped around them. scan a document, and it burns that scan onto a rice paper stencil that wraps around the drum. it's super fast, but VERY finicky. My particular model has a crude raster image processor computer interface. i still need to get a period-appropriate PC to get it to work properly. seeing this video makes me want to make my own!~

[@michaelmichalski4588]

It was also incredibly quiet for printers of rhe time and was a favorite in public libraries.

[@RyanSchweitzer77]

I used a ThinkJet exactly like this one back in the mid-late '80s at my local public library. It was part of a PC-based magazine article/abstract look-up system the library had called "InfoTrac", where you could search for subjects in magazine articles (and other periodicals, IIRC). Contemporary to the technology at the time, the InfoTrac system was basically a generic PC (probably an XT-class machine going by its case design, IIRC), with a early (probably a 1st-gen) Hitachi CD-ROM drive loaded with a disc of magazine abstract data the system would call upon to look for search results entered in with InfoTrac's DOS-based front-end software installed on the PC. The drive bays on the InfoTrac PC were covered by a thick card attached with velcro to the case which had instructions on how to use the system printed on the card (and to probably keep people from futzing around with the drives) which I curiously detached one time I was using it (when noone was looking :) ). This is how I found out it used a CD-ROM drive and disc to make the system work. It was the first time I found out about CD-ROM technology and had seen a CD-ROM drive--and it made perfect sense to me at the time, since my grade-school self then was already familiar then with CDs for digital audio. So I realized then that obviously the next logical step was to use CDs for digital data, too. Prior to then, I wondered how the InfoTrac PC was able to store all of that magazine data. :) And to print out your search results on that InfoTrac system, attached to it was none other than an HP ThinkJet printer exactly like the one showcased in this video. I remember it operated very quietly compared to the dot-matrix impact printers at the time. This is probably why InfoTrac chose this printer for their systems, so it wouldn't cause a noisy racket in the quiet of a library.

[@medes5597]

That CD based infotrac system cost $4,000. Which seems insane given what it was, but the earlier laserdisk based system cost $20,000 and require 8 times as much space for the same amount of data as the CD one could do. Infotrac still exists today but its not as cool as the older versions.

[@michaelturner4457]

Last time I saw one of these was in early 90s. where British Telecom used to them to print out customer engineering work orders

[@travistaylor3186]

I’m glad I’m not the only person who likes and collects old printers and word processors

[@steveunderwood3683]

These things first launched as GPIB devices for the instrument market, and were mostly given away to sweeten deals on instruments. We bought a lot of instruments that year, and ended up with a bunch of these in the lab. They clogged with ink a lot, if you didn't use them every day. So, getting to that bladder was important. You had to poke at it to unclog the head.

[@Sulfen]

I think that we are living in a perfect timeframe where we can still appreciate original technology in its infancy and still have more advanced technology to compare it with. The generations in 20+ years might not be as lucky to witness such things unless it's through video.

[@JonWhitton]

Made in Singapore, fantastic vintage model. Good find

[@ronsmith4325]

I remember these printers well from my school days. Fun fact: those same ink tanks were also used in the Kodak Diconix 150. I remember the ink from the original tanks had such a unique smell once it was on paper ... sort of like a newly unwrapped magazine. I also remember the printer being incredibly slow - it took a good few minutes to print a page of plain black text if you used TrueType fonts from Windows instead of the printer's built-in fonts, which do print very fast as shown in your video. Seeing as this was first-gen inkjet tech, that's not very surprising. It was basically like a dot matrix printer with an inkjet head. Oh let's not also forget, the ink tanks in these printers barely lasted for 1000 pages, and cost upwards of $50 to replace back around 1990-1992... adjusted for inflation, that would be about double today - $102. EDIT: Just got to the part where you're printing the image of the printer - yup, that's about how "fast" it would print TrueType fonts from Windows 3.1, I guess it treated anything that didn't use the built-in fonts as an image of sorts. Interesting.

[@zaprodk]

I have three of these. Unfortunately the contacts on the flex ribbon for one of them is corroded and beyond repair, sad :(

[@paulmichaelfreedman8334]

Pretty sure you can still get replacements for those if you check out an HP parts supplier's database. Those old little things were and still are used in the industry (lab, plant control room etc) as they could directly replace old serial matrix printers without and modification to software and printer setup codes. Plants seldom upgrade their equipment during the useful life of the plant. And many production plants can be way older than that. Best if you have the Spare part number, they are nearly always printed on the part (or with a sticker).

[@zaprodk]

@@paulmichaelfreedman8334 No. Not this cable. Also i have no interest in saving it since i got two more that are intact.

[@paulstubbs7678]

'Find a date'??, Quite a few IC's have '84' as a date... The mains input socket/filter is an easy fix, readily available. 'Printer' on the bottom, as it is directly under the standards logo's, it is probably a 'category' for the standards.

[@BeaversAreInsane]

Our local library had these...much quieter than the alternatives. Makes sense!

[@jinxterx]

Close the lid when printing, it's meant to keep the paper in the right place.

[@Ganiscol]

A reminder of where HP came from and where it ended up in present day

[@jon-paulfilkins7820]

Had one for doing rough drafts of essays at uni... (I was a 'mature' student and work let me take one as I left for university as they were not working in the work environment) Got rid off it as I could not get the replacement cartridges. This is last century so no ebay/amazon etc.

[@amyfarish]

I notice when it's printing text it prints in both directions of the print head, but for graphics it only prints in one direction. I'm guessing that's because it needs to buffer the incoming line to do that, and it doesn't have enough memory to buffer graphics?

[@myofficegoes65]

It prints the graphics in only one direction to avoid misalignment of the dots between rows. I have had regular dot-matrix printers do the same thing

[@tarstarkusz]

If you get a print buffer that can talk to a C64, you can get this to work with a C64. One of the models was compatible out of the box, I believe.

[@rawr51919]

BASIC out of this and a C64? Such a nerdgasm