On Thursday, December 29, 2016 at 11:40:32 PM UTC-5, Martin Eastburn wrote:

....snip...

Both computers used printers at the end. The program came up and paused
asking for printer service. So they could be turned on set up and made
sure the paper was correct. (single shot of printout) - never changed
that. The 8080 used a daisy wheel printer with 132 column paper. The AT
used an OKI 132 column paper. Both had tractors.


I installed hundreds of Radio Shack TRS-80 word processing systems for a
Fortune 500 company back in the 80's. They all came with a RS Daisy Wheel
printer.

http://oldcomputers.net/pics/TRS-80-II_table.JPG

The systems were so bad that the first thing we had to do was open up
every keyboard and ground the plastic case to the circuit board to try
and eliminate static electricity issues. Even on systems where this was
done, there were situations where you could walk over to the system, tap
the case of the keyboard and the printer would spit out a single character.

That didn't do much more than waste a sheet a paper. In other cases, the
static would corrupt either the 8" floppy that held the WP program or
one of the data floppies that held the user documents.

In the worst cases, we ran a ground wire to the building's sprinkler system
pipes and attached it to one of those velcro grounding bracelets that come
with memory modules. The users were required to put the bracelets on their
wrist before touching the system.