The IBM 3800 Continuous Forms Laser Printer (1976-1991)

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3 pointsDrScump2 comments

I remember being an FE at the time and having to work on these beasts. FE uniform at the time was a dress shirt and tie, and working inside one of these things resulted being covered in a cloud of toner dust in most cases. I'd buy oxford dress shirts almost in bulk, because the day you worked on a 3800, you went home and threw the shirt out.

I worked in a shop with two of these, side by side. I don't remember toner (except for the rare spillage) so much as the fog of thousands of tiny bits of paper dust.

It was generally a low-maintenance job: pull the printed stack periodically, separating individual jobs; every 20 minutes or so, feed a new box of paper and tape-splice new to old; separate individual jobs in the printed stack; listen to the gentle white-noise shuffle of paper swimming through the tracks.

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