[GreenKeys] 32 and 33's

[David I. Emery]

On Fri, Oct 05, 2007 at 09:11:56AM -0400, Teletypeparts at aol.com wrote:
> They hold up far better than originally thought by design engineers.  I have 
> seen some TWX machines with 1500 hours on the meter.  Oil em every 100 hours 
> or so.  

	That figure surprises me.   I am old enough to have been around
the minicomputer engineering world back in the 70s when 33s were still
quite common as consoles and low volume output and paper tape punching
devices - we often kept them running at least 10-12 hours a day and
sometimes 24 and while they weren't typing much during most of this
time, the motor was running all that time and of course all the
associated shafts, clutches and gears.

	I certainly saw many 33s last several years in this kind of
service, which is certainly more than 2000-3000 hours a year.   Now
granted most of those machines probably  sat idle with the motor on for
a hour or even several hours, typed a few lines and accepted a few
keyboard commands and maybe then printed 3-4 yards of paper at most and
then went to sleep for the rest of the day with a couple of breaks to
print brief two or three line messages.   And every once in a while
maybe they'd be used to punch a tape or print something more extensive
but not normally.

	But still I don't remember many breaking down in this service
and I don't remember armies of TTY repair folks around maintaining them
either.

	This of course is very different from say a wire service model
15 banging away news stories virtually 24/7 or a weather service 28
grinding out PIREPs and aviation weather reports and TAFs and so
forth... one of those machines might easily chew through a roll of
yellow paper in a day or more, while an engineering lab 33 even though
running an equivalent number of hours might grind through a standard
roll of paper in a month or even two or three.

	Most were retired when CRT based terminals replaced them or in a
few cases higher speed dot matrix terminals such various DecWriters.

	

-- 
  Dave Emery N1PRE/AE, die at dieconsulting.com  DIE Consulting, Weston, Mass 02493
"An empty zombie mind with a forlorn barely readable weatherbeaten
'For Rent' sign still vainly flapping outside on the weed encrusted pole - in 
celebration of what could have been, but wasn't and is not to be now either."