Toshiba stuffs an entire PC into a dot matrix printer – Toshiba Jimucon SJ-9500

I thought I was about to read about a cool old computer from the late 80s, not something from 2024

After yesterday's retro-look case https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42180217 I was expecting someone got an old dot matrix printer, gutted it and put in a modern PC into it.

Let me check eBay for printers...

I would love to know what business niche these have been filling in Japan - TFA states that this series of machine has been offered since 1984.

Does it have an operating system like Win/*nix? Or something more bespoke? Does it offer the user an experience free of internet related distractions?

The original Apple LaserWriter had a 68000 chip that was more powerful than the Mac it was attached to.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_68000_series#Main_use...

dot matrix printers use impact printing - it physically strikes the paper to push an inky ribbon against the paper, like an old school typewriter ribbon.

for areas where carbon copies are required a laser or inkjet printer won't replace a dot matrix printer because they can't activate the carbon layer by physically touching it - you'd have print the form again and sign each one, or something similar.

~> Got an old dot matrix printer, gutted^W it^W and put in a modern PC into it

attached a keyboard and run ed like it's '73 again?

As article alludes, this is basically an industrial or point of sale device. I imagine it in something like a car repair shop, where your order and estimate gets printed on a 3 part carbonless form. More compact than a PC with a separate printer, but I bet it's expensive. Still cool.

Inkjet printers come and go, whereas dot matrix are still reliable workhorses.

Our Fujitsu DL1100 from the early 90s (DPL24C+ command set) is still as good as ever.

The Commodore 1541 and related drives use the same 6502 CPU as the C64, VIC-20, and other computers they connect to. It is possible to, for example, run a disk duplicator program on a Commodore computer connected to two drives, which executes code on both drives so that they can be disconnected from the computer but continue to copy disks from one to another.

Same here it's because of the way the subject is written. The emphatic word "entire" suggests that it is impressive to be able to stuff a PC into that form factor, which it has not been for at least two decades. Before clicking on it I was like, surely this is some retro material, not current?

> 1024 x 768 LCD screen is more than enough for those tasks.

In what decade? Little to no modern versions of PC software look good at this resolution. Even Excel is going to look like crap.

the article states an annual sales target of 1000 units. this will be running custom apps for niche use cases, not windows and excel.

We are kind of getting back there - a modern server (and mainframes before them) has a bunch of slave processors for all kinds of specialized work, not only GPUs, but DPUs, crypto acceleration, and so on.

The C64 went a bit further than that, in something that reminisces of a Plan 9 network of a workstation and one or more storage servers (the drives).

With USFF machines being a few hundred dollars, or roughly the same cost as any other machine from dell, hp, lenovo...

I'm shocked they bothered.

I'd be less shocked if its just an old design with an off the shelf SBC stuffed inside the case.

Factories, warehouses and so on. It really doesn't seem unreasonable machine for use in industrial uses that still want paper printouts. Also raid-1 might be option for SSDs so it is also reliable.

It’s like a Toughbook. People who have bought them for 49 years want nothing else. It’s a brand with a brand.

I mean I get that bit, but where would you see one in the wild? The bank? I know Japan has some anachronistic tendencies but I'm curious what the job description of someone who uses one of these is