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The Blog

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A blog by a typewriter repair tech, for typewriter people. Embracing Analogue Is it time to update the introduction to this blog?  I think so.  I want you to close your eyes and imagine a massive library, vast and expansive in the knowledge it covers.  Please note that I don't actually want you to close your eyes, because then you wouldn't be able to read this.  Just close your mind's eye...your...pineal gland?  Anyway, imagine that big beautiful library has a catch.  Not a single dot of information in all those volumes has any practical use.  Now I also want you to imagine that most of the shelves are dry-rotted and the books appear in huge heaps all over the place without the slightest, faintest illusion of order.  As if it were ground zero of the "nuke of knowledge," the hazy aftermath of a several literary-megaton violent enlightenment that created this monumental catastrophe.   That library is me.  Well, no, I am not a physical library, I am in fact
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Entering the World of Thermal Typewriting

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  The Typestar 4/5 (Internally the 4, branded the 5) It has been a significant amount of time since I last updated a post on my blog.  Well, today I decided to dive into Thermal typewriting, a sub-category of electric machines that use thermal print heads, officially called "electronic typewriters."  I created a YouTube video at the end of last summer detailing my first thermal machine ever, a TTY or Teletype machine designed as an aid for the hearing impaired.  That machine featured a large VFD display and printed with a very low resolution thermal printhead. Typing late at night. I absolutely LOVE this display The TTY machine didn't get a whole lot of use, my go to machine for the last several months has been my Groma Kolibri, a little East German made portable with lovely typing action.  However as my daytime schedule became more packed with school and repair work, my time to write creatively or respond to letters shifted further and further into the night where I was
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I needed a laptop: the 1980s Grid Computer

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  Tried to keep it as original as possible In the world of retro computing, especially portable retro computing, few computers are as iconic as the GRiD systems laptop.  GRiD pioneered the clamshell laptop design in the early 80s with the GRiD Compass, a staple in military and NASA missions, and both as seen in the director's cut of Aliens.  So when I realized I needed a laptop for business and personal use (can't always take a desktop everywhere), I settled on building one inside of a rusted out GRiD rather than buying off the shelf. There were two initial concerns right from the start.  First was concerning the keyboard.  Intended to use the original keyboard which consists of a rather strange layout.  Notice first the spacebar which is labeled "Bloomberg".  This laptop was custom built for the financial corporation, and included a financial keyboard with bucket loads of random custom keys I knew nothing about.  To fit these extra keys, the punctuation was shuffled
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