Does a Stylewriter II Have Any Value?

[Paralel]

I acquired a Stylewriter II recently, it's in quite good shape, has the original cables, packing materials, and box.

Does such an item have any value? I looked on e-bay and it didn't appear to be worth anything, but I figured I'd check here to see what you guys thought. If the consensus is that it is indeed junk then I'll just chuck it on the scrap heap.

 

[Anonymous Freak]

With the original box, I guarantee someone on here would be willing to pay something for it, even if it's only cost of packing and shipping.

But yeah, that was a very high-production-volume model, that isn't particularly unique. (I have two of them, and have given two away over the years.)

 

[Nathan]

It has some value to anyone who has a mac with a serial port. It is especially so, since short of a mac capable network printer anyone with such a computer (and no printer) has almost no easy way to print besides floppy swapping with a fair bit newer mac. If you wanted to give it away, I might take it off your hands. If you have a mac with a serial port and can find ink, it might make a half-decent printer for it.

 

[Dog Cow]

The ink for all StyleWriters is still sold today. It's typical Canon ink. Look it up.

 

[LCGuy]

The StyleWriter, StyleWriter II, StyleWriter 1200, StyleWriter 1500, and I'd imagine a few others can all use the Canon BC-02 cartridge, which as Dog Cow says, is still sold new today and unless Canon goes out of business within the next 24 hours, I can't imagine them getting any harder to find any time soon. Even if they do one day discontinue the production of BC-02 cartridges, you'll still be able to get them refilled.

 

[Scott Baret]

While it's no speed demon compared to today's inkjets (despite its codename being "Speed Racer"), the StyleWriter II still offers pretty good print quality. It's monochrome only but is the last StyleWriter that works with 68000s (the only other one that works with them is the original).

I personally prefer the LaserWriter 4/600 for a compact monochrome printer, but the SWII is pretty good if you prefer ink to toner.

The hardest part about the SWII is finding the driver for it if you want to use an older system version. Make sure you get a SWII that includes the driver disks and, most importantly, the correct Chooser version. The SWII driver doesn't work with the version that comes with 7.1 or earlier. If you can't track down an SWII with the original floppies, make sure to use System 7.5 or later (which comes with a driver built in that can be used for either the original SW or SWII).

 

[LCGuy]

Or if you can't, or don't want to use System 7.5, version 1.2 of the SWII drivers is available here.

 

[Scott Baret]

Good to see it's in Apple's archive! I didn't even realize it was there!

You can also use this driver with a StyleWriter I. It's a better driver all around, but don't use the driver's "clean heads" option if you have a StyleWriter I--it was designed specifically for the later model. You'll have to clean them by using the buttons on the printer itself.