Apple Imagewriter II Restoration

[macman142]

A fellow traveller! We are a rare and exotic species.

I have an ImageWriter II, a StyleWriter II and a 2200, and then a selection of lasers: 2x Laserweriter Pro 630s, Laserwriter 4/600, LaserWriter 12/640, and 2 x LaserWriter 8500s, with an extra sheet feeder for A3 and the envelope tray -- just because an 8500 isn't big enough on its own. Ho ho.

Then I have a couple of Xerox solid ink printers, and a Laserjet 4m Plus with duplexer.

God, that sounds sad. Anyone want one of the spares?

*waves*

I've come across a lot of collectors of Apple stuff but never another Apple collector interested in Apple printers. Which I always think is odd, because an Apple printer will make a retro setup complete IMO. I also collect Apple scanners. Printers and scanners just seem to be a relatively forgotten part of the Apple lineup.

I had to reduce my LaserWriter collection by selling my LW300 and (sadly) binning my LW12/640 and LW2, only keeping the LW8500 (being the last LW I think)?

I have an ImageWriter, ImageWriter LQ, both variations of the ImageWriter II's, StyleWriter, StyleWriter II, StyleWriter Pro as well as StyleWriter 1200, 1500, 2200, 2400, 2500 and 4500.

In the scanners I have the OneScanner, Color OneScanner and the 600/27.

Seems like a dizzying amount of re-capping above ^^^

The HP LaserJet 4 was an absolute workhorse. They went forever and ever, like a faithful tractor haha. The Xerox solid ink printers were unique. At work we had a couple of Xerox Phasers (?) and  the print quality was excellent. They had a unique smell, probably highly carcinogenic!

 

[johnklos]

I would love to get an ImageWriter LQ... I have a beat up ImageWriter II that I found in a Dumpster many years ago. The knob is broken, the plastic is cracked, it's rusty as heck, but it still prints beautifully.

I wrote drivers to print color graphics and screen shots to an ImageWriter II from my Sinclair QL (m68008 processor). It's pretty straightforward. I even found some of my program listings from the '80s recently. I'll have to post them somewhere some time soon.

You probably don't want to do software flow control - it's a pain. Hardware handshaking works just fine on the ImageWriter II, once you make the cable.

 

[Crutch]

Anyone have an Apple Daisy Wheel Printer?  Is it weird that I think those are kind of cool?

 

[pcamen]

Anyone have an Apple Daisy Wheel Printer?  Is it weird that I think those are kind of cool? 

This is the one true unicorn for me.  I've got a manual, I've seen various parts like the print head on eBay, but I've NEVER seen an actual Apple Daisy Wheel Printer show up for sale anywhere.  WTF?  Do they actually exist?  Perhaps just not that many of them were sold I suppose. 

 

[LaPorta]

The only semi-rare one I have is the Apple Dot Matrix printer. Never seen a daisy wheel in real life, that’s for sure

 

[superjer2000]

Check out this video of the Apple daisy wheel printer printing a graphic image from a Lisa. I didn’t know it could do this. 

 

[CC_333]

Well, now you do!

I think, with all the advancements of the last 20 years or so, we tend to take for forget how advanced things were even in the early 80s. It may seem crude, simplistic and quite ho hum by modern standards, but back then, it was a very incredible accomplishment!

c

 

[cheesestraws]

That is a really cool trick for a daisy-wheel.

 

[croissantking]

Welp, Another project on the table. Just picked up an Imagewriter II from Scott, And as expected, there are definitely a few things with these beasts that need attention.

1. You guessed it. Capacitors, Capacitors, Capacitors! A few of these just started to leak, while others appeared ok. But I decided to change every single one of them.

Getting this little bugger apart is definitely NOT easy. it takes quite a bit of thought, but eventually i did it.

First and foremost, Here is the driver board:

View attachment 1016

This basically is the Power Supply/Driver board. few things to note here, the two Sanyo-Panasonic proprietary STK-based power output ICs. Made for toshiba of course with thier own part number, but ive seen and changed enough of these to know exactly what they are. The one on the right is the voltage regulator output IC, and the one on the left is the stepper motor driver output IC.

This is the worrisome part, Even though these printers appaer to be fairly reliable, These power-pack ICs are definitely NOT known for reliability, So the first order of business is to recap this thing, and do some routine maintanance to keep these ICs cool and running under optimum conditions. Any slight variation, these ICs tend to fry themselves. If they do, well, its game over.

These ICs were used notoriously in integrated stereo amplifiers, and projection TV convergence applications, and some old tube-type RCA sets used them in the power supply, and they were known for failure. Ive changed a plenty.

So enough of that, You can probably see some spooge leaking from the left most tall capacitor, so they all gotta go!

View attachment 1017

Removed the cap, and shown the leakage.

Now here: I decided to remove the heatsink again, for routine service and mainanance of the STK power pack ICs. And the heatsink compound was dried and and crusty! Time to clean them up and re-grease the ICs. This will increase the service life drastically.

View attachment 1018

View attachment 1019

Here is the shot of the digital control board for the printer, and all of its capacitors that need replaced as well. Again, one of these caps had some spooge too!

View attachment 1020

View attachment 1022

and the solder joints on this board were really rickety. I touched most of them up already before I took this photo, but you can see clearly the ones I didnt and how bad they are.

This is undoubtedly the result of being in storage/outside/basement where constant moisture, and heating cooling cycles took place causing metal fatigue. Had to be fixed!

View attachment 1023

Oh and here is the undershot of the chassis:

View attachment 1021

More to come! as I dive into the thing mechanically. I may even retrobright the case too, because it is piss yellow, Even all the way through the plastic in the inside as well, which further proves my theory of environmental storage.

I have an early IW II like yours that I want to recap. Do you have (or is there) a capacitor list available?

 

[techknight]

Its been many years since this post, so unfortunately not. Plus i had alot of the caps in stock already and i just changed them as i needed to.

 

[croissantking]

Its been many years since this post, so unfortunately not. Plus i had alot of the caps in stock already and i just changed them as i needed to.

No probs. I’ve pulled mine apart now anyway. The large 6800uf capacitor is hard to source - most of the replacements are too long.

I have a IWII cut sheet feeder that’s seen better days too - the plastic hinges are snapped. Is it worth the trouble to fix this? Is it considered a desirable add-ons, or do most retro enthusiasts prefer tractor feed paper?

 

[LaPorta]

Never actually seen the feeder outside of the IWII manual. That's pretty cool. I just bought a new box of tractor paper a year or so ago...will last me a long time.

 

[olePigeon]

See if you can find the graphic file for this. I wonder how well the IWII "plays" Eye of the Tiger.

 

[croissantking]

The capacitor values for the driver board on my early (no silkscreened 'ImageWriter II' logo) IWII are as follows:

C1 - 220uf 10V
C2 - 47uf 35V
C3 - 100uf 25V
C4 - 1000uf 10V
C7 - 6800uf 50V
C10/C18 - 10uf 16V
C11 - 200uf 35V
C12 - 1000uf 35V
C14 - 4.7uf 35V
C17 - 1uf 50V

Note that C7, the very large cap, cannot be taller than 35mm. Most of the replacements available are 40mm or more, and I've verified that won't fit.

 

[CC_333]

See if you can find the graphic file for this. I wonder how well the IWII "plays" Eye of the Tiger.

This is on the level of those "floppy drive orchestras", which is a pretty interesting way to take broken and otherwise useless drives and make music with them.

Watching this and a few other videos almost makes me want to try this out myself. Almost.

Particularly if someone already did the hard work of figuring out how to make the drives (or printers) do what they do, so all I need is like an arduino and some already written software.

c