A battery-powered laptop typewriter 🔋 1987 Brother EP5
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- Опубліковано 30 вер 2024
- The concept of a battery-powered laptop typewriter isn't as odd as it might seem now. In 1987, it was a much lighter and cheaper alternative to a laptop computer for writing, journalism, and business. And it actually does a better job of erasing mistakes than a full-size typewriter.
2009 video about a similar model with a small LCD for editing the text before it prints out: • Brother EP43 laptop ty...
#brother #laptop #typewriter
Ahh D cells, for when you want something to weigh ten pounds more and work for two hours.
Outside of baby toys I haven't needed a D cell in years n
chewing thru them with my hot wheels boosters, until i modded em to use wall power
You have just described the first Amstrad Laptop (a PC XT that ran on D Cells).
its impressive that 30 years later this machine still functions and prints beautifully..
even more impressive is the erasing mechanism!
That's Brother for you. My Brother laser printer is still going strong after fifteen years. Just need to change the toner and such once in a blue moon
Am I the only person that enjoyed using demo model typewriters in department stores? Leaving behind a string of profanities for the next person was good fun.
I did the same
I was excited to see this had correction after watching Technology Connections' video on it!
Me too!
Technology _Corrections_
@@vwestlife all of my tapes are tapes
I'll bite - is this typewriter month on UA-cam? :D
Technology Connections channel? O Brother.....
@@enginecrzy I started with that video, and I couldn't finish it, but he linked to an OLD video that was pretty good.
That's an impressive typewriter.
I did'nt know Rowlf relesed an album. :)
Rowlf knows all about carbon copies having worked as an IBM typewriter salesman.
Oh, I haven’t thought about those Henson IBM shorts for a long time. The convoluted coffee (?) machine with feature creep, that breaks down easily, was my favourite.
So it uses carbon-film like the IBM Selectrics but transfers the carbon by heat rather than impact? Genius! Makes me wonder if using an iron or soldering-tip could erase characters? Incidentally, my Amstrad NC100 also uses a center-negative jack, and of course the mains adapter always goes missing when it uses center-negative or unusual voltage... ;)
Wow, another typewriter video, first Technology Connections now you!
I had something similar back in the day. It was a battery powered Brother with a single line lcd, but instead of a thermal printing system, it was actually a 'plotter'. It used tiny ball point ink pens to 'write' the letters. It was also capable of doing different types of graphs.
I still have one of these that use the ball point pens. It had four colors..One of these days I'll have to see if I can locate some replacement pens or figure out a way to refill the ones I have.
This sounds both cool and slow
I used to type on Brother word processors in school, but they were like portable computers because I saved them on floppy disks! I wish Brother would bring back electronic typewriters since they’re been a niche market for people that just want to print text without buying a bulky monochrome printer!
I had one of these typewriters back in the day! At the time, I was attending a night school paralegal program and used this to type many of my class submissions. It was an impressive unit.
We had something similar before my parents finally got us a home computer, it took floppy disks so you could save your work. It had the one line lcd. My sister used it a lot and for some time because she did not like word processors
I guess it required a lot of tape to print a school essay. 😄😄
Canon Starwriter?
Of course, REO Speedwagon is now running through my head...
The details about how it prints and erases using the same tape and head _must_ be investigated! I need to know!
Yes now I'm curious especially after watching technology connections discussing the kind where the typewriter does have the lift off tape.
Maybe it's electronically charges so a positive charge repels it onto the page and a negative charge sucks it back onto the ribbon? That's my uneducated guess anyways, I have no idea how these things really work.
If I had used a typewriter 5 times in my life, I have used it plenty, but man do I wish I had this to type with!
That'll do great with cassette labels and J-cards!
I like the song at the end though... very fitting to end the video with!
Thanks for uploading!
Damn, my office still uses Mechanical typewriter and is considering upgrading to electronic typewriter.
I can’t believe I forgot that I used to use something like this, with a one-line LCD, in the early to mid-90s. The sound of it quietly moving the thermal print head into place and printing a line on the page was so soothing compared to dot matrix, IBM Selectric or daisy wheel printers, and the letters appeared as if by magic. You could use it while someone was sleeping in the same room. Can’t even remember what make or model the machine was, or what it looked like, but I remember the way it printed like this. So neat.
Edit: Think it was a Canon TypeStar 6. I remember it being kind of silvery/gray.
IBM made thermal transfer typewriters too. They called it the QuietWriter.
I would probably end up misplacing that thing. "Oh Brother, where art thou?"
Another great video!
I had a more advanced model of this machine. It was in a gray case and had the 1 line LCD screen, It also had a limited word processor function that you could store several lines of text - they would scroll by - and you could adjust and correct mistakes - and then print the buffer later. This was important because it made it possible to interface with a computer.
It had an RS232 interface in the back! As I understand it, the computer would dump data to the buffer and then wait while the typewriter printed the text that was collected (which you could see in the LCD screen!).
There was a technical trick though, You had to configure DIP switches so the computer and typewriter used "hand shaking" -- which was a way for the printer to tell the computer to stop sending temporarily while it emptied it's buffer.
I connected mine to my Commodore 64 and 128 (I had both) - running "Paperclip" - a great word processor by "Batteries Included". It output to the Brother and ran beautifully. I used it for years until I moved up the technological ladder to an Apple Mac and laser printer.
The type face was way better than dot matrix - and the machine held up very well.
I used to have a Brother word processor, but that eventually went by the wayside. However I still have my trusty old Royal Mercury manual typewriter from the 70s.
No batteries required.
A video of lift-off correction was recently don’t by the ‘technology connections’ channel. I had no idea previously
Makes me want to get a typewriter again.
I've got an extremely similar brother typewriter except mine is beige and has a small display to preview a small amount of what you are typing . A tiny bit of word processing. And then after typing this I see you have the black version of it :)
The only thing worse than "D" cells is the "C" cell. I NEVER have them on hand. Ever. I own 2 products that require them too.
And another thing that sucks too is having to use an odd number of batteries. That was always annoying as heck.
I have a portable cassette recorder (Panasonic RQ-2104) that uses those, and bought a 4-pack of them just to use it with batteries (fortunately, I can also power it from an outlet with an AC power cord, though the built in power supply does generate a non-negligible amount of noise).
AA cells are the same length as a C cell so depending on the battery holder type they might be able to be used in a pinch.
I had one of these toys that hauled "matchbox" cars at age 10 and figured that out.
i.etsystatic.com/15114482/r/il/a10156/3772994334/il_fullxfull.3772994334_6v38.jpg
I have loads of LIDL C and D cell rechargeables. When I bought them they were £3 for a pack of two so not that much more than Alkalines. They seem to be lasting better than the Ray-O-Vac rechargeable alkalines I used to use.
The nice thing about C cells is that they are exactly the same length as AAs. With some simple spacers you can easily use your favorite NiMH AAs. Alternatively go to the beach. I heard Sally sells C cells by the sea shore.
Comparing to an Oki microline 320 turbo, it's really slow! But I still really like it
typewriters are so cool. i wanted a mecanic one, but they are too loud. so a electric one is a lot more quiet. and now i have one, its so much cooler than to write on a pc
@4:44 - That was the reason that a murder was solved - The death note was typed on a typewriter that allowed investigators to read the entire message from the machine cartridge that wrote it. Even then, the typewriter was permanent.
Never know what you're going to show next and that's what's so cool about your vids 🤙
Had one with the little lcd mine was a Canon i had terrible handwriting most of my life so this actually helpd me alot fond memories
As commented they waste a lot of ribbon between characters much like my Brother label printer with wasted ribbon at each end of the label, but the cost of time the user can save with the typewriter usable anywhere without disturbing the peace made it acceptable for businesses, authors, home use. I think its brilliant.
Shoot, I just saw someone only a few months ago using a portable copy machine out of the truck of their Subaru in the Starbucks parking lot. They must still have a use today.
This was my high school graduation present typewriter that went off to college with me! All that thermal paper turned brown and crispy within a few years.
Just a few hours ago in a nearby thrift shop I saw a Canon branded portable typewriter with a small LCD that this visually reminds me of. Didn't really think much of it at the time, picked it up to take the lid off and was surprised to find a typewriter given how light it felt. Yours looks more capable that I would've expected.
You allways do complete reviews, so we have no questions to ask after
A perfect match for today's "do anything from anywhere" economy...
Aiyaaa.... I felt in love with this one, until I saw the delay typing "feature" I could definitely live WITHOUT. Haeeehhh....
A portable, battery-powered typewriter is an important element of Nicholson Baker’s book “The Fermata.”
Thanks for this video! Love these kind of typewriters. The Canon Typestar series is very similar. They had small LCD screens to preview your text and accepted cartridges to change the typeface. There was even a RAM cartridge to store and load files. Came in a nice carry case too.
Typewriter overload. First TechnologyConnections now VWestlife. Time to bust out my Typewriters then. This is awesome!
I have a soft spot for attachea cases, and indeed appreciated this sleek "cover and carry" design 😎
I saw things like this EP5 in stores in the mid 90's, they were a little more again as they had a 3.5" HDD floppy drive and could save the text file, or load it from them, with a 1 or 3 line LCD display. They made for mini-mobile source code editors for me on the commute into London or on planes for years. I wish I still had one.
MY GRANDMOTHER NEEDS ONE OF THOSE TYPEWRITERS!!
We used to have a Canon StarWriter 30 word processor back in the 90s, bit more towards being a "laptop" than a portable electronic typewriter though having a large LCD and a built-in OS of sorts to type, edit, stylise and format all you needed out on the screen first before printing, it was clunky to use, but once you got used to it, you could make up documents quite fast on it, and it too had the thermal deposited ink, so you could nab a used cartride and read what was previously printed, my sister wrote some saucy stuff back then..... :S
oh Brother..many people don't realize how popular hard copy still was even after the PCs were out, like you said, 9-pint dot matrix was krap & many of us used dedicated word processors since the print quality was much better than using early word processing software on a general purpose computer. The correction on this unit was really impressive! When you were using the calculator function, it reminded me of the old mainframe consoles where the programmer only had line-printer display as output, before the CRTs were available.
I bought an Atari ST and then a 24pin dot matrix printer the next month as I needed a printer to do anything useful. Then I was writing and printing club minutes, newsletters, and all sorts of things. Remember, this was several years before anyone outside of Arpanet had heard of email.
Nice a new video! Yeah good old D Batteries... Something rare today's. Love typewriters videos. Have a nice Thursday.
I am beginning to believe you have a library of ready-made videos about various topics to upload whenever another large tech UA-camr makes a video about the same topic :P
No, I actually was running dry on content and was inspired to record this by TC's video.
Difference between normal and expanded text - reminds me of Commodore modes a little, with 40/80 character sets. (Or similar). Just saying!
Nice. I had a clone of the model with the small LCD display made by Texas Instruments in the the 80s.
i recently started aquiring typewriters and the EP5 was the first one i found at a thrift store for 15.00 with the power brick and extra ribbons. since then i have gotten other typewriters but i wanted one of the older EP 22s with the computer interface as i have a vic 20 and c64 to use with it. i ended up special ordering a sears branded version from ebay for 40.00.
i wanted the older version instead of the EP 44 as i wanted that 9 pin dot matrix look cause its super nostolgic anf my 5 already has the better lettering. the first book i ever wrote i made drafts on an old dot matrix printer
Its funny you uploaded this today. A couple days ago I found a brother AX-15 at goodwill for $8.
It seems like a glorified label printer to me. A typewriter that you can type faster the it can print and that you can't see what is typed while typing confirms this. But at least you can type at night without someone complaining (the inventor of the Microwriter invented it because he received complains in hotels) and it uses common batteries (what in fact is more expensive than rechargeable batteries but easily available).
Those Brother printers were also notorious ribbon eaters (a pre-cursor to the Brother inkjet printers that would drain the ink cartridges at an accelerated rate during the mandatory self-test/alignment procedure at every start up!). Not reusable for obvious reasons, and every space advance would advance the ribbon, thus wasting possible typing use. Same when correcting, as it wastes nearly an inch between each corrected character. You could also scratch off the print with your fingernail. The thermal printing worked better, however it was useless in school, as instructors would not accept thermal paper-printed assignments. Some people loved 'em, I hated everything "Brother".
The ribbon is supposedly good for about 36 pages of typing. No wonder Brother sold them in three-packs!
@@vwestlife the Cadillac of typewriters
FYI the brother customer assistance # written on the “PET” is still active!
Technology Connections has a really interesting indepth video about the correction feature on these typewriters.
So did Tech Tangents.
to me this would make sense if all i am doing is typing . yea they have nice word processor apps and all but if one dosent need all that horsepower, this is the way to go. i remember hearing about a well known author who wrote his books on a now old dos machine . why fix a 1000 year old ship if it aint broken.
"Game of Thrones" author George R.R. Martin still uses WordStar 4.0 for DOS: www.theverge.com/2014/5/14/5716232/george-r-r-martin-uses-dos-wordstar-to-write
@@vwestlife and Terry Pratchett wrote on a highly-upgraded BBC Micro! I believe right up until the very end, though he might’ve begrudgingly upgraded in his final few years. At one point he had all sorts of home-automation stuff hooked-up to it as well!
Lol, they hit and melted together in 90s. Win3.1 laptop with builtin printer.
I had no idea typewriters could erase text like that.
There’s a ton of ways they erased text! Tech Tangents and Technology Connections have done some dives into the various options. (The former on mostly the manual methods with some automatic, and the latter the inverse.)
Back in the '90s, we had a CasioWriter. Had an LCD display and could hold a line in memory to let you edit it before committing to print...
Your timing with this video is excellent, because you put it out just a few days after I dug out an old Sears 300 typewriter from 1983, which I'd lost in a move nearly 4 years ago. It's a rebadged Brother, with a mechanism similar to this one. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find the exact name of the ink cassettes it used (all I know is that they've been out of production for years), and finding 8x10 thermal paper has proven equally difficult. Still, it's interesting to see the similarities between your machine and mine.
On a side note, something I learned today that I find interesting... some stores still sell new typewriters. I was at a Staples this morning buying a reem of printer paper and saw that they had several new Royal typewriters available for sale. I find the idea of walking into a major office supply store and buying a brand new typewriter in 2022 to be equally amusing and fascinating.
I had one of those battery-powered brother typewriters, but mine was more white/cream and it had the single line LCD screen to preview what you were typing. I used it for about 2 years before I got my first IBM 286 clone.
I had the one-line lcd version many many years ago, a lovely quiet little machine
Its actually very satisfying being all quiet idk why. I hope I find one of these at a thrift store some day
If someone out there has one of these and wants to record an eight hour loop of the demo print I'd be forever in your debt. I would sleep soooooo soundly to that.
Wow, I can't believe they still use that 1-800 number.
I really like the inclusion of the carbon paper song in the end.
Ok, so it's a sideways thermal film "dot matrix matrix" printer... in a typewriter!
Been wanting to get my teeth on one of these Canon portable typewriters for a while
That super thick battery pack could probably power a house back in the day 😂😂😂
In school expanded type, wide margins, kerning and line spacing were great ways to make it seem as if you wrote more than you actually did. As long as you didn't push it to a ridiculous degree or the teacher didn't bother to count words it sounded like a really plausible strategy for the slacker lifestyle.
This is really unique. You know what's funny is I was born at the tail end of 1987 in the beginning of December what's really amazing is that many things came out that year. I actually wish I could have seen what the 1980s was like because it was really cool back then.
Cool typewriter! I was expecting loud printing. It being silent was a cool feature.
By the way, thanks a lot dude. Because of you and this video I've tumbled down the typewriter rabbit hole, even dug out my old machines and played around with them (slightly dried up ink ribbons notwithstanding) and watched about a hundred hours of typewriter related videos. I'll get you for this!
Just a few questions I feel I have to ask - when you reach the end of the page what happens? Does it scroll onto the next line or does it 'ping' like a manual typewriter? Does it break up words which won't fit onto a line - with a hyphen - or does it simply scroll down to the next line and put the word in full? Justification, does it offer any or is it exactly as it is typed? And, finally, what happens if you use heat sensitive paper - will it work without the cassette or is that necessary for using it? Just wondering. (Thank you!).
It beeps when you're getting close to the end of a line. No automatic word wrap or justification.
@@vwestlife Thank you for the reply and for letting me know!
Wow - I remember the slightly more advanced Brother models just after 1990. The fax paper feature was awesome when one had access to fax paper over money for ribbon cartridges. lol
The red and blue color scheme reminds me of a vintage IBM Thinkpad. Going off the lack of wear on the keyboard, whoever owned that must've taken exceptional care of it or barely used it. Too bad new ribbon cartridges can't be had for it as the print quality does look very good.
I hate D-cells I left some d-cells in a Sony boom box and it lasted a week and I did not even turn on the boom box more then twice.
The best part was the goofy music at the end!
I remember to unroll this type of cassettes when I was doing my military service in order to burn them as they retain what was typed, like an old school typewriter fabric ribbon.
(Yes, as you can guess I wasn't in an elite fighting corps on the battlefield... 😁 )
Wee nitpick - fabric ribbons never did this, but there were plenty of carbon ribbons on loose reels from the 60s and onward before these cassette systems! And those carbon ribbons definitely needed burned for security purposes. So these cassettes are the same type of ribbon, just put in a “modern” form factor. (Though ironically that sounds like it was _more_ of a PITA for you than dealing with the loose-reel earlier types would’ve been!)
@@kaitlyn__L A fabric ribbon can reveal infos if it was used just one time, not being rewound to type again. It's less easy to get than the cassettes and a carbons but with time and the appropriate equipment you can read the very light imprints left by the letters . Obviously if the ribbon is used more that one time the "signal" is lost in the successiv texts.
I really appreciate the apropos novelty song.
I think this was something I wanted as a kid =]
Brother makes the sturdiest machines! It's no surprise it still works great. My Brother laser printer defies all the stereotypes of printers since it works flawlessly and never had a problem printing even from another computer. I've had it for fifteen years. It can't do color but that's okay if I need color photos printed I can pay for high quality copies at the local CVS or Walmart but that's rare of I I do that.
Although if I were to get a type writer I'd get an IBM selectric. I type really fast and it would get annoying for me waiting for the head to keep up.
Love the ending song!
I had a similar one made by Cannon. It used similar thermal cartridges but it didn't have the correction function. It also had a one line lcd display where a whole line of text could be reviewed before printing.
Printer mechanism reminds me of IBM’s convertible pc, introduced roughly about the same time
I had a similar but non-portable version of this typewriter in the early 90's.
my aunt had on of those brother typewriters, i used to play with it and waste ink and paper, which was godforbid damn expensive !
i was amazed at the quality being used to my moms old ribbon typewriter. that thing also still works.
Thanks for the video, Kevin.
The action is so graceful.
Neat. It would be even better with a serial port so you could use it as a computer terminal. :)
🎶 Type it on the run, baby...
I had an Epson! So much fun as a kid seeing the words print out one sentence at a time
Ol brown ears is back.
Remarkably clever lyrics for kids' music. Someone went above and beyond on the writing.
@@nickwallette6201 the Muppet Show was always popular with kids, but it was explicitly aimed at all-ages with clever writing throughout, and plenty of jokes that go over the kids’ heads :) kinda like Pixar today! Certainly not kids-only like Sesame Street!
These were simply known as electronic typewriters. Not laptop typewriters.
They were a requisite for college back then.
But most electronic typewriters were not battery-powered like this.
I've been following @VWestlife for around 10 years. This video's just made me realize that.
the erase is pretty neat
lol! I had an earlier model of that Brother, a bit lighter and smaller with the display. But, I only remember it using thermal paper-which, of course, was problematic as the text faded after a long period of time.
Nonetheless, they were useful for college papers. Which is what mine was used for.
By the late '80s we had transitioned to PCs and Macs. I bought a MacPlus around '88, I think and a dot matrix printer. I had a parttime job where we used IBM PCs and the old floppies. Oh, the fun. Two platforms, different protocols, low storage and slow! Years later? The Dial up modem and more fun!
I wonder if I still have that Brother around here. Bit of a Packrat, I almost never throw anything away.
In fact, I still have the MacPlus!
Pretty impressive typing speed there. Much as I hate to admit it, my typing speed has NOT increased since I learned to type in the eight grade. And I have multiple advanced degrees and use laptops daily, lol.
Old tech. Remember when calculators cost a small fortune. Had Red Diodes, and only 8 digit displays.
I have an old Texas Instruments version circa mid-seventies around here somewhere.
It's great to be an old fart, no? I'm probably at least a decade or more older than you?
I'm just always fascinated at the gadgets you find. Some are eye openers, some never knew the existence of and some I've actually owned. Amazing that typewriter. I've used and owned a regular angle trick and a IBM Selectric. Never heard of this one. Too gimmicky. Never would've wanted one.
I had a Sharp PA-1000H when i was in high school, these typewriters were so fascinating to me. Mine had I believe a 2 line display and stored about 2 pages in memory under different file names. I remember our English teacher made us write out each spelling word for the week 10 or 15 times, I would just type it up once on here and spit it out 10 times and my teacher always accepted my very nice typed spelling words!
i used something like that in high school but it had a screen on it and you could type on it then print out later. think was lw 30 or something. also used alpha smart too. alpha smart pro and 3000.
Now I want one... damn it... 😁