Reverse-Engineering an IBM Wheelwriter Into a Low-Resolution Printer

In the 1980s, home and office computers were just coming into their own, and mechanical typewriters seemed to be on their way out. Somewhere in this interim though came electronic typewriters like the IBM Wheelwriter 6, featuring a modern keyboard coupled with a print head that slammed individual characters onto a paper, just like typewriters of old.

Since the mechanical portion of a printer was already there and ready to be electronically interfaced, Chris Gregg decided to hook his Wheelwriter up to a computer as a printer. For this hack he used a LightBlue Bean+ board, though he notes that he could have simply purchased an “option card” for it, which wouldn’t have been nearly as fun, and difficult to find.

Another awesome feature is seen at around 2:45 in the video below, where it goes into “dot matrix mode,” hammering out a picture of Clarus the DogCow in an estimated 50 DPI resolution. You can see more details on this project on Gregg’s GitHub page.