0x0028 - Dot Matrix Typewriter

I found this Brother EP-20 and thought it was quite interesting

If I was going to seek one of these out I would try to get an EP-22. It would be nice to be able to use this as a printer.

It's a pretty cool little typewriter. It weird how this is one year older than the Wheel Writer 3

[alannise]

In 1988 in was hit by a car in the way to high school and broke my left hand. Since I was left handed I was unable to write in class so I
I bought this typewriter at Sears and brought it to class with me. The print sounds disturbed the class, but I was able to type on the screen. I used this for several weeks while my hand healed.

[CattoRayTube]

The traces on that keyboard PBC are lovely!

[ZILOGzVIDEOS]

It's wild to see a typerwriter so well engineered and dead quiet that also has hand drawn traces.

[thatrecord]

Bringing my ep-20 to school is fun. I used it for notes once in geometry. After that though, I just brought my 1957-58 Smith Corona Clipper Typewriter. What fun it was to use it on an assignments in English THE ENTIRE PERIOD!

[Hagledesperado]

2:29 "Despite its diminutive dimensions, it's definitely a desirable device."

[robertgaines-tulsa]

That looks like a smart way to reverse the polarity on a power supply without chopping and splicing. It looks like a good way to adapt a DC power jack for other sizes also.

[nrdesign]

I had no idea these even existed. For the time, this product is a fascinating thing.

[leeosborne]

I've got an EP-22, and have successfully used it as a printer as well as a typewriter. Brother still market packs of 100 sheets of A4 thermal paper - they're expensive but easy to get hold of. I recently got five ribbons for £20 as well.

[umby]

I know this video is several years old but I felt it was worth mentioning that you can get packages of thermal paper in cut sheets on Amazon and other sites, usually called something like PocketJet paper (intended for Brother's current portable printer lineup, which are thermal printers.) I have an old Citizen printer that uses thermal transfer ribbons, but I just use thermal paper sheets when I want to mess around with it.

Also, those mechanisms are neat. I had a Canon StarWriter with a print mechanism like that. Unfortunately I was a kid and I absolutely destroyed some ribbon cables trying to get it apart to fix/replace the faulty floppy drive. Live and learn...

[tmunk]

FYI: only the EP-22 and EP-44 had the RS-232 interface. That feature was popular for a hot minute between 1983-86 and then vanished from the featureset. No other EP series has it. I keep a pair of EP-44s to use as retro printers because they are LQP rather than having the Dot-Matrix print quality of the EP-20 and EP-22.

[Noodleude]

I have a silver-reed exd-10! I couldn't find hardly any info for it online, so this helps a ton.

[Ezinma]

I really liked this video. "Yeah. I think this was a mistake"
HA! I'm glad you also explained those dirty hands, man! I was like: 'you couldn't wash up first?'.

Thanks for sharing.

[Benbacc]

What a thorough, excellent video sir!

[joshpayne]

I had its cousin, the EP-22 (black case). It was on sale, new, as a veeeery cheap closeout in mid-1985 and my folks got one for me to take to college (thinking it'd be useful, bless them). It ended up being fairly useless, given that its font was very crude, and took expensive proprietary ribbons to print on regular paper, and my professors refused to accept anything typed on it because it lacked true descenders and they didn't want to have to deal with that... Of course, handing in thermal paper was out of the question, lol. I think I ended up donating it to Goodwill. I didn't even mind that it had chicklet keys (I was a proficient typist even then, however).

[kylehazachode]

I have a few Silver Reed thermal typewriters. I buy letter sized thermal sheets from bhphoto and adorama

[C]

Brother also had plans for a security camera in 1984... it was to be called "Big Brother" . This is just a joke of course.
Brother was/is a good and solid brand of printers and office like equipment.

[josjong]

Mechanical typewriters certainly had left and right margins. And later models also had tabs stops on many (all) positions.

[Charlie-ezlw]

Isn't there an option for a continuous writing in which the machine goes automatically to the beginning of the next line without having to hit return?

[mauryginsberg]

I really need to stop procrastinating and get something like this, thrift shopping for retro electronics is almost impossible in the UK as they usually do not sell any electronics due to a legal requirement, & to make things even worse! UK e-bay is usually quite expensive for retro electronics.

[dnb]

I bet it would actually last very long on D-Cell batteries. One battery can output at least 5 amps each, so it could output 20 amps in total.