Hello greenkeys, my name is Thomas, and I am a chemical
engineering junior who has been interested in mechanical
calculators and teletypes for a number of years. I was
just able to acquire a model 15 off facebook marketplace
about a month ago. From my experience with messing around
with typewriters and my Friden calculators I feel pretty
confident that I can figure out working with the
mechanical side of the model 15, but I'm entirely out of
my depth on the electrical side of things. How electrical
stuff works on a fundamental level has been entirely non
intuitive for me and is the reason I didn't go for ECE,
and I simply don't know what I don't know. I don't want to
fry components of this thing, so I'm here.
I've done some research and I've watched all of the
Curious Marc videos where he restores a 19 and a 15, and
I've downloaded and started to read the manuals he
archived. I also tried looking through the archives of
greenkeys, but I didn't see any way of sorting it
by topic. I still tried looking through 1.5 years of the
subjects, but I didn't see anything which applied to my
situation.
My 15 came wired up with a 4 prong plug where 3 of the
prongs are parallel and the other is perpendicular to the
others. It also came with a stand which had 2 2 prong wall
outlets, the 4 prong, some large 2 prong I've never seen,
and ports for the send and receive. The stand itself had a
male 2 prong plug. The last time this was used seems to be
in 1958 in a hospital based on the paperwork that was
under the stand.
With all of that said, I'll ask my questions. Can the
15 be wired such that it can be plugged into a standard US
outlet without the stand using a normal plug? From looking
at a wiring diagram which looks like it matches I think it
says that it can take 110V AC from the 4 prong plug, or
120V DC from a different plug. Next, how do I set up a
current loop so it can just print to itself? What do I
need to buy/build to be able to connect a computer to it?
With the photo I hopefully attached correctly, what are
the intended purposes of the ports under the stand? What
are things I should be especially careful of when working
on this, in any sense?
Sorry for all of the questions and text, but I wasn't
able to figure this stuff out from my research thus far,
Thomas M