Only greybeards will get the joke.

The good old days of line matrix printers. I miss that sound. I also miss the low hum and rumble sound that computer rooms made. Modern data centers are just deafening and will give you a headache in no time unless you're wearing hearing protection. Ah, the good old days when it was like the wild west and you could really learn something deeply about technology.

Just noticed the strange Edsyn Soldapult hybrid on the table. That looks like a cross between the original Soldapult and the Soldapult 3. I can't find any Edsyn models that look like that one with both a long plunger and a large yellow trigger/thumb plunger.

Kek! I zoomed in more and I see what's going on here. There is a Soldapult 3 on the left and a Soldapult US140 sitting right next to it making the two solder suckers look like one strange hybrid. It was confusing why Edsyn would make a model with two different plunger mechanisms that didn't seem be able to work together. Cool.

I work overnight reel-to-reel tape backup in the day, having to hand wind the tape over the head and onto the the new reel. We had to stay at the console for two critical tasks - Press Y to start the backup verification (~2hrs into the process) - Make sure the printer stays online as all the standard out went to the printer, and without that the backup would fill the buffer and hang.

The printers used steel print bands with the alphabet printed on them 5 or 6 rows high with letters shifted a few characters on each line allowing the band to spin and the heads to strike as the correct letter passed the correct location.

These PoS bands would break every 1000hrs or so and send us into a panic as we only kept one spare between multiple locations. Hearing one POP meant a good 2-3hr delay in bringing the system back online.