The next up in the line of things that I have re-bought after having had, then dopily disposed of, is an ImageWriter II. It arrived today, and I wasn't sure what to expect, really, given the description in the auction. But, I expect the description helped it be at least reasonably cheap.
The reason I decided on the ImageWriter II is that it is one of the few printers that actually can serve pretty much all of these vintage machines. It is possible to print to it from an earlier Apple II via a Super Serial Card, and it is also possible to just hook it up to a //c, IIgs, or ADB Mac and print that way. Printers are big, and I don't have the space (or interest in vintage printing, really) for a printer for each computer in my arsenal. And, actually, it turns out I do still have, for some reason, my original ImageWriter II power cable (which is identifiable by the fact that its plug is at a right angle).
Here is the ImageWriter as it arrived. There's a red light, but that's ok, that's just the signal of it not having paper (and, though you can see the paper, you can also see that it has fed all the way through, so there is no paper remaining on which to print). It took a little bit of digging to find out how to perform a test print (turn it off, hold down form feed, turn it on with form feed still held down, then release them). I pulled out the printer ribbon, tightened it up, held my breath, and gave it a try.
And it worked fine. Needs a new ribbon, but as far as I can tell, that's all it'll take to get this working nicely again.
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