
Reviving the Apple 410 Color Plotter - Ivoah
https://www.nycresistor.com/2017/12/13/reviving-the-apple-410-color-plotter/
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matthewwiese
Great and simple write-up. Vaguely remembered nycresistor from other articles
I've read, so I'm glad this was posted here.

I think HN would be well served to have more front page retro hardware hacking
articles. They may not be useful in the same way as other posts, but they sure
as heck are delicious brain food and a relaxing diversion.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Ask and you shall receive. Here's a simple plotter a friend of mine cobbled
together from broken PlayStation parts at our Hackerspace:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16008772](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16008772)

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jacquesm
Plotters are just one small step removed from a 2D mill. This particular kind
of plotter, where the paper is fed through to obtain one axis of movement
suffers from bad registration, any kind of slippage on the paper (and there
always will be some) will lead to registration errors. Try different kinds of
paper to determine which kind gives you the least slippage by repeatedly
drawing very large patterns in different colors and then studying the
horizontal edges near the limits.

The command set looks like a modified HPGL.

~~~
jws
I can't tell from the pictures, but around that time period diamond grit drive
wheels came into use. Either the top or bottom drive wheels would have a
diamond grit on their surface which would make an indentation pattern in the
paper which acted to key the paper in place. The registration was even better
than drilled paper which could develop a little slop around the pins and the
holes.

~~~
phs2501
Given how fast this plotter (not the type in the OP) throws paper around I'd
say it works, at least in ideal circumstances.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYGPSAD5L_k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYGPSAD5L_k)

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imglorp
Since OP mentioned the nice big HP x,y plotters, that reminds me I once wrote
an emacs lisp HPGL driver to hit the serial port and run one in grad school.
I'll have to dig it up sometime.

Edit, just remembered: it was probably to output one of the VLSI CAD layer
formats, like GDS or EDIF.

~~~
walshemj
Ah me to I remember having to produce custom drivers for GINOF so that we
could use the full extent of then then top of the line HP plotter.

We also managed to put one of those HP's through its design life in less than
2 years because of how intensely we used it.

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ChickeNES
I really should find mine. I got it for free off of a local computer store's
junk table about 12 years ago. My understanding is that it's fairly uncommon,
at least compared to the Imagewriter I/II. Would be cool to take the roms and
try to write an emulator for it, though I think emulating the Laserwriter
would be more valuable from a historical perspective, since it was so
influential in desktop publishing (and one of those odd cases were the
peripheral had a faster CPU than the computer it was connected to, much like
the Commodore 1541 disk drive).

Edit: And on second glance it's quite possible that 410's Z80 is clocked
faster than the 6502 in the Apple II.

~~~
Someone
The CPU seems to have run at 4MHz ([http://www.cpu-
world.com/CPUs/Z80/NEC-D780C-1.html](http://www.cpu-
world.com/CPUs/Z80/NEC-D780C-1.html)).

However, I spot a 4.9152 MHz crystal on the photo of the PCB (a quarter from
the left, halfway down)

So, I guess it either is overclocked or (IMHO more likely) that that clock is
divided into a 2.5MHz clock.

Either way, I agree with you that it likely had a faster clock than the 1MHz
of an Apple II.

However (certainly if you can get around with 8 bit registers; it shifts a bit
if you can use the 16 bit parts of a Z80) a Z80 has to be clocked faster (some
people claim by a factor of about 2:1) than a 6502 to _be_ faster (extreme
example: a NOP takes 4 cycles on a Z80, 1 on a 6502)

In summary, I guess this _is_ faster than the Apple II it was designed to
connect to, but not by much.

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reaperducer
The simple plotters of the past were really great pieces of kit; and fun as
the day is long.

Even the little Commodore 1520 was a very capable machine in a toy form
factor. Four independent color pens, and a great tool for learning geometry
and programming at the same time.

~~~
walshemj
Yes I remember using one to print the results from an experiment at my first
job we had a rig that used a high speed cini camera to record the movement of
an "object" when subjected to high flow regimes underwater.

To digitize it I covered the wall of a spare office with graph paper and
projected the film onto the graph paper and manually using pencil marked up
the graph paper then transcribed the x,y coordinates which I than plotted on a
HP A3 plotter.

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joezydeco
I thought it was kind of neat that the service manual was generated on a Lisa.

