You old ancient dinosaur. Plus too cheap to buy a simple hundred buck monochrome LASER printer. You probably still got the first dollar you even made. But we loves ya anyway.

But really, I have heard of people trying to re-ink those ribbons, and for typewriters as well. Some I think had some success.

If it uses a plastic ribbon which IIRC the IBM Selectric did, no dice, but a cloth ribbon should be doable.

What keeps the ink dry is that it is all packed on the roll and not really exposed to the air much. Remember typewriters that would not type right away but after you type a while which advances the ribbon or you just grab it and advance it by hand it works fine ? So if you do this it has to go on that spool fairly tight.

Damn, you make me feel old. Back in the annals of my memory seems to be someone who needed a ribbon and took just half of the ribbon from another typewriter so they would both work.

Kids today, you show them a dial phone and they have no clue, can you imagine showing them that typewriter **** ?

But seriously, if you are the type who does not print every day, do not but an inkjet printer. If they sit too long the heads block up. I used to have an HP 1100+ that I really liked, just black and white but when I hit print it printed right now and that could be after sitting a month, and it was quiet.

Then I bought an HP CM1312MFP and I am sorry. These pricks don't even give you a full load of toner and a full set of toner cartridges is $280. The whole thing was $500 new.

One question though, does it use that tractor feed paper with the holes in the sides ? If so, can you actually still get that ? Or do you have a basementfull (new word alert) of it somewhere ?

Anyway, if you decide to re-ink, I am pretty sure that ink is not the same as ink for an inkjet printer. (which is more expensive than gold) What you probably want it the type used to re-ink ink pads like for rubber stamps. Or simple printer's ink like for the newspaper or something. Not inkjet ink, you'll have to mortgage the house to get enough of that.