Imagewriter II riboon woes

[VERAULT]

I have three apple Imagewriter II printers, and Id like to sell two of them. I have a stack of NOS black ribbon cables and I thought I had one sealed color ribbon. Upon opening it, it typically fell to foam roller rot. So here is my question. Does anyone have a fix for this? Or does anyone make an aftermarket color ribbon that doesn't use the foam rollers ( The black ribbon doesnt use them so I dont understand why the color does). Id like to demo the units as working both in color and B&W but that's impossible without the color ribbon.

[ngtwolf]

Can't answer your main question but i would say that it's likely not worth the effort. Maybe it's different in your area, but both my friend Dave (davejustdave on YouTube) and i had the hardest time getting rid of our Imagewriter 2 printers... He originally tried selling his for $20 and then just tried giving them away and it took months for that to happen. for mine, i suckered a guy into taking it when he bought a spare apple 2e from me at a local event. But yeah, it became a running joke on how to get rid of those things.

[VERAULT]

Oh I am under no illusions how worthless these things are.. Thats why I have three. Im including it with an apple IIe that came from a teacher with a whole slew of educational stuff.

Anyway since no one chimed in (unsurprisingly, old printers are not a hot topic for the most part) I decided to clean out the foam gunk and cut some old doublesided foam tape into strips (two layers deep) To try and get the printer ribbon moving. Seems to work.... eh ok I guess. I will try a test print and post results:
colorribbon.jpg

[NeXT]

The black ribbon doesnt use them so I dont understand why the color does

Untrue. While I do keep a box of NOS Apple black ribbons I have found other Apple black ribbons that did use foam and were useless.
While I have one NoS color ribbon that does use a plastic roller I can't remember what third party made it. It *might* of been Star.

[VERAULT]

I was really referring to the actual apple branded black ribbon cables. Im sure you are right. But the only black ribbons I had generic were ITOH and they did NOT have foam rollers either.

[VERAULT]

So it worked (the double sided tape seems to be holding for now), here are some basic images from The Print Shop: tests.jpg
All in all not too much work and better than nothing I suppose.

The hardest part of it all was finding a version of The print Shop for the Apple II that supported color printer ribbons, that took a couple hours.

[ngtwolf]

Oh I am under no illusions how worthless these things are.. Thats why I have three. Im including it with an apple IIe that came from a teacher with a whole slew of educational stuff.

Anyway since no one chimed in (unsurprisingly, old printers are not a hot topic for the most part)

It could be worse, it could be old modems. But yeah, that's what I did... I gave the guy one of my Apple IIe's for $40 and even then could only get him to take the Image Writer 2 for free... and he was even hesitant then.

The hardest part of it all was finding a version of The print Shop for the Apple II that supported color printer ribbons, that took a couple hours.

I actually went so far originally with my imagewriter to buy the cable and got ribbons and everything to test, and then realized that I didn't care enough at that point in a printer that didn't really work with things other than apples. I actually do like dot matrix printers myself, but I really just need one and the ImageWriter is a bad choice if you want one that supports all your computers. The best choice is a Epson (or compatible) 9 pin printer. I still have a few printers I need to get rid of, including one huge wide carriage one that I'm pretty sure I can't even get someone to come pick up for free. Maybe it'll sell for a few bucks on ebay, but it hasn't been worth the effort.

[VERAULT]

I used to have a fantastic 24 pin Epson over 20 years ago, but I lost it somewhere along the line. I don't remember if it could do color.

Correct me if I am wrong but people have gotten the imagewriter II printing on windows 7, it is a serial printer after all. If I cpuld get it working on windows 7 (and maybe find the elusive sheet feeder) I would use it as a daily driver. I miss the sound of dot-matrix pins hitting paper.

[DFinnigan]

I used to have a fantastic 24 pin Epson over 20 years ago, but I lost it somewhere along the line. I don't remember if it could do color.

Correct me if I am wrong but people have gotten the imagewriter II printing on windows 7, it is a serial printer after all. If I cpuld get it working on windows 7 (and maybe find the elusive sheet feeder) I would use it as a daily driver. I miss the sound of dot-matrix pins hitting paper.

Tractor-fed paper is most reliable. If it will suit your needs, I would recommend that. I only use tractor-fed paper with my ImageWriter. I use it to print source code for my software development efforts.

There are new color ribbons. Someone had a batch manufactured about 4 years ago.

Black ribbons are available new from several sources.

[VERAULT]

This Printer is not for me, but I do have a box or two of tractor paper. Honestly one of them has thin paper which jams alot.