Michael A. Terrell wrote:
gregz wrote:
"Michael A. Terrell" wrote:
wrote:
I'm assuming the part that looks like a mouth with teeth (contacts) inwards
is the female and the part that looks like a tongue with studs (contacts) on
it is male?
Centronics. Centronics was a manufacturer of mainframe printers who
decided to use a standardized interface on their products, and it spread
across the industry over time. The original connectors were AMP Blue
Ribbon series 36 contact. Now part of TE Connectivity.
We had quite a party trying to fix a centronics printer that was part of a
minicomputer system. Late 70's design. Must of taken 3-4 rotating shifts
of work.
Don't remember the details, but a replacement was not at hand.
Those printers were very expensive, so not having a spare wasn't a
common occurrence. I hated the GE band printers, but I thought the Data
Products drum printers were interesting. Just don't print all 132
columns of the same character too often, or they would walk across the
floor. 
I had a Printronix P300 or P600 at home for a while. It had 4 or 5 large
boards to make up the logic/interface and store the character ROMs. The
giant 1/3rd HP sized induction motor inside of it was the best part.
The other rediculous beast was a Florida Data dot matrix printer. It had
the fastest carriage I've ever seen in any printer. The thing would rock
any printer stand back and forth with ease.