I'm looking for a daisy-wheel printer that can be run from a modern computer. Purchased an Olivetti typewriter that could supposedly print from a 3.5 floppy, but it didn't work.
Just a hunch - I bet a lot of the printers from the 80s (eg the TRS-80 one) speak plain ASCII over a standard parallel port, with CHR(10), CHR(11) and CHR(13) for line feed, page feed and carriage return. (Although I'm guessing, so check before you buy!)
I still use my mechanical typewriter (a Royal Aristocrat handed down to me by a family member) quite frequently. Computers are nice, but they also offer many distractions and lack that wonderful tactile feedback that mechanical keys provide.
Conformation bias strikes again. There continues to be is a market for electronic typewriters and people are making them. Mechanical typewriters may be defunct but that is not the only kind. Everyone expects them to have gone away so they don't bother checking the facts.
Still looking.