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I am sure someone has already pointed this out, but there is indeed A4 sized tractor paper. Old person irrelevant anecdote, in the days before affordable high r

I am sure someone has already pointed this out, but there is indeed A4 sized tractor paper. Old person irrelevant anecdote, in the days before affordable high resolution inkjets laser printers, 9-pin dot matrix, 24-pin dot matrix and daisywheel/golfball printers ruled the world. Submitting coursework in college was required to be on A4 paper, and if you used a dot matrix printer you lost marks too. Some of my college professors, even on my computer science undergrad were so stuck in their ways that they demanded you type everything up on a manual typewriter and would penalize you if they thought you had done it on a computer. College students were lazy, so everybody would use the college's 9-pin dot matrix printer (losing points) and then mad dash for the single guillotine cutter in the adminstration's office like they were French royalty in 1789. I special ordered very expensive A4 tractor feed paper, and bought a second-hand daisy wheel printer that nobody wanted because daisy wheels didn't do graphics, and typed everything up on a computer. No lost points, no lining up to use the guillotine, no mad dash at the end. But yeah, places using sizes other than A4, screw those guys.

bborud 4y ago
I would suspect the software was written for a non-A4 format, so if you were to put A4 paper in it you might get line wraps that would screw up multi-page prints. Oh my, I just remembered the pain of setting the perforation skip when using nonstandard paper. And then realizing that those problems were a luxury compared to the problems big professional office printers throw up today.
- justinlloyd 4y ago
  That satisfying tearing of the perforated tractor feed edges. And the not so satisyfing tear when you tried to do too many at once because you were in a hurry. Wide format tractor fed music paper in green. I had tractor fed graph paper for a while. If you want to know frustration, try lining up your DnD game maps to that... And I had forgotten about the perforation skip/misalignment. Thanks for bringing that back. Triggered.
samstave 4y ago
IDEA: Someone please make a "white noise" generator that play audio of old computer 'whirring' noises... like a dot matrix printer, a fax machine, a modem, etc... that plays low-key in the background... I actually miss the sound of a dot-matrix.
- blowski 4y ago
  Not just white noise but whole songs https://youtu.be/VXbP7OkQ8LQ https://youtu.be/VXbP7OkQ8LQ
  - samstave 4y ago
    HOLY SHIT!!! That was my first printer ~1986 or so.... gosh I wish I still had it. Make it play the Windows 95 sound... (the guy who wrote the win95 startup sound was paid $30K) -- This is pretty amazing though: https://youtu.be/pX4tBIwhOqY https://youtu.be/pX4tBIwhOqY
- gaius_baltar 4y ago
  Search for "old computer asmr" gave me this: https://youtu.be/tt3kYcHbbLg?t=160 https://youtu.be/tt3kYcHbbLg?t=160 (link right to the relevant part).
  - samstave 4y ago
    OMFG thank you!!! 16 v 33 bitch
- AceJohnny2 4y ago
  The excellent MyNoise.net website has a couple that may match: "Vintage Office" [1] has a Dot Matrix printer. "Calm Office" [2] has a Printer/Scanner. [1] https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/vintageOfficeNoiseGenerator.php https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/vintageOfficeNoiseGenerato... [2] https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/openOfficeNoiseGenerator.php https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/openOfficeNoiseGenerator.p...
  - 4y ago
analog31 4y ago
That brings back the memories. I was one of the first students to submit a word processed paper at my college. "Just in case," I had bought a cheap and slow daisywheel printer. I cooked up this idea to prepare my pages with correction fluid before printing them, but never found it necessary. I ended up asking one professor if it was OK to use word processing. He said, just this once. The next week, there was an all-faculty meeting (small college), and they actually discussed whether word processing should be allowed. The profs who were already using word processing spoke up in its defense -- from the physics department. They reassured everybody that the computer was not doing the writing. The college came out with a statement saying it was OK, but that we were on our honor to not use a spell checker. By the time I graduated, every prof was using a word processor. What I don't think the profs figured out, for several more years, was how to grade a paper that's mechanically perfect. All of my papers got A's, and I chose courses where the grade was based solely on written work. I think in terms of efficiency and aesthetics, using a word processor bumped my GPA by easily half a point by graduation. I was already a good typist thanks to programming. Many years later, when my kids were in grade school, the writing assignments included formatting requirements, including margins in inches, for documents that would never be printed. These requirements came from the ironically named "Modern" Language Association. Today, teachers say, any format you want, just get it in by the deadline.

bborud 4y ago

I would suspect the software was written for a non-A4 format, so if you were to put A4 paper in it you might get line wraps that would screw up multi-page prints. Oh my, I just remembered the pain of setting the perforation skip when using nonstandard paper. And then realizing that those problems were a luxury compared to the problems big professional office printers throw up today.

justinlloyd 4y ago
That satisfying tearing of the perforated tractor feed edges. And the not so satisyfing tear when you tried to do too many at once because you were in a hurry. Wide format tractor fed music paper in green. I had tractor fed graph paper for a while. If you want to know frustration, try lining up your DnD game maps to that... And I had forgotten about the perforation skip/misalignment. Thanks for bringing that back. Triggered.

samstave 4y ago

IDEA: Someone please make a "white noise" generator that play audio of old computer 'whirring' noises... like a dot matrix printer, a fax machine, a modem, etc... that plays low-key in the background... I actually miss the sound of a dot-matrix.

blowski 4y ago
Not just white noise but whole songs https://youtu.be/VXbP7OkQ8LQ https://youtu.be/VXbP7OkQ8LQ
- samstave 4y ago
  HOLY SHIT!!! That was my first printer ~1986 or so.... gosh I wish I still had it. Make it play the Windows 95 sound... (the guy who wrote the win95 startup sound was paid $30K) -- This is pretty amazing though: https://youtu.be/pX4tBIwhOqY https://youtu.be/pX4tBIwhOqY
gaius_baltar 4y ago
Search for "old computer asmr" gave me this: https://youtu.be/tt3kYcHbbLg?t=160 https://youtu.be/tt3kYcHbbLg?t=160 (link right to the relevant part).
- samstave 4y ago
  OMFG thank you!!! 16 v 33 bitch
AceJohnny2 4y ago
The excellent MyNoise.net website has a couple that may match: "Vintage Office" [1] has a Dot Matrix printer. "Calm Office" [2] has a Printer/Scanner. [1] https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/vintageOfficeNoiseGenerator.php https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/vintageOfficeNoiseGenerato... [2] https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/openOfficeNoiseGenerator.php https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/openOfficeNoiseGenerator.p...
- 4y ago

analog31 4y ago

That brings back the memories. I was one of the first students to submit a word processed paper at my college. "Just in case," I had bought a cheap and slow daisywheel printer. I cooked up this idea to prepare my pages with correction fluid before printing them, but never found it necessary. I ended up asking one professor if it was OK to use word processing. He said, just this once. The next week, there was an all-faculty meeting (small college), and they actually discussed whether word processing should be allowed. The profs who were already using word processing spoke up in its defense -- from the physics department. They reassured everybody that the computer was not doing the writing. The college came out with a statement saying it was OK, but that we were on our honor to not use a spell checker. By the time I graduated, every prof was using a word processor. What I don't think the profs figured out, for several more years, was how to grade a paper that's mechanically perfect. All of my papers got A's, and I chose courses where the grade was based solely on written work. I think in terms of efficiency and aesthetics, using a word processor bumped my GPA by easily half a point by graduation. I was already a good typist thanks to programming. Many years later, when my kids were in grade school, the writing assignments included formatting requirements, including margins in inches, for documents that would never be printed. These requirements came from the ironically named "Modern" Language Association. Today, teachers say, any format you want, just get it in by the deadline.