AWA's Acoustic Hood – Effective Silencing for Office Printers | Hacker News Reader

AWA's Acoustic Hood – Effective Silencing for Office Printers

computeradsfromthepast.substack.com

39 pointszdw28 comments

I smile every time I hear the 9-pin scream at an airline gate. The sound of my youth, playing around with a Z80, 1200/75 modem, centronics cable, and fan-fold paper.

When I was a kid I inherited an old 8088 and a 24-pin panasonic dot matrix from my dad's office when they retired it. The computer was ok, but the printer was amazing. Sadly at some point I had too many issues with the paper feed and decided to toss it. I do regret doing that, but it was huge and heavy!

That printer could definitely wake the dead. And it shook the old (very sturdy) sewing machine table I had it on lol.

Why do some airlines still use 9-pins?

Cheap, low-maintenance, easy to troubleshoot?

Dot matrix printers can print two or more copies simultaneously using carbon paper.

And in the old days, the old paper airline tickets were printed on little carbon paper ticket books. As I remember it, the airline would tear out one copy "coupon" from the ticket for each segment that you flew before issuing your boarding pass.

But paper tickets are pretty much unheard of now days, and I don't think airlines are using much carbon paper.

The real reasons they're still around at airports are probably:

1. Compatible with the airline's ancient software and terminals

2. Small size relative to laser printers, can be integrated in to the airline gate/ticket desk "furniture"

3. Highly reliable, and doesn't need expensive consumables. Just need to replace the ink ribbon maybe once a year or so

4. Can print one line at a time if necessary as a sort of ledger/manifest, such as for each passenger who's checked in, and you can tear off whatever's already been printed whenever it's needed

> 4. Can print one line at a time if necessary as a sort of ledger/manifest, such as for each passenger who's checked in, and you can tear off whatever's already been printed whenever it's needed

I do this with a receipt printer to keep a real-time hard copy of my server access logs.

In March 2020, when Covid-19 was about to be a big deal, there was a period of time where the biggest question for F1 fans was "Will the Australian Grand Prix happen or not?".

On Reddit, someone posted a printout of a passenger manifest listing the 2 Ferrari drivers on a flight out of Australia before the race, a big sign that the race was probably not going happen, and this printout came from a dot matrix printer.

Other than inertia, my understanding is a number of business types benefit from, or have made processes based on, instant carbon copies.

I printed my “underground newspaper” on a Panasonic dot matrix printer back in the 90s. One night I came up with the “innovation” of placing a box over the printer to mute the sound (so my parents wouldn’t hear the printing and admonish me for “wasting” paper and ink, or worse, ask what I was printing). It seemed like a great idea until I noticed the printer was stopping every so often. Concerned, I pulled the box off and was met with a wave of hot air. My young self didn’t realize that dot matrix printers get hot. Apparently the obvious heat sink fins on the print head didn’t register with me.

Tandy used to have a humongous case like that you could put around a wide format dot-matrix/daisy wheel printer. The outer surface was painted that classic trs-80 grey and added a good 3~4inches in all dimensions around the printer and worked surprisingly wheel. With the case closed, the printer was quiet enough to sit next to while it was running, otherwise it was annoying being out the same room with the thing.

The generic term used to be "hush covers," if I remember correctly. The printers of the day could be pretty noisy blighters.

I had a college job as Computer Operator for a University where they had Band Printers.

NOISY as F**, screaming with a metal ribbon containing character-shapes being hammered by a 132-head (yes) static print-head.

Could print a page every second or two - and could feed paper quickly across blank regions.

Those things were the size of modern trans cans (with the folding lids). And they were insulated for sound.

Fun fact: the awa building is clearly visible in the helicopter scene in The Matrix

It was the tallest building in Sydney for quite a while and is now heritage listed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AWA_Tower

The AWA company was founded in 1909.

>the final solution

Bad word choice…

Honestly, if you hadn't pointed it out, I personally wouldn't even notice. In context of iterative improvements, the term fits naturally, there isn't any alternative I can think of that means the same thing.

Yeah, commonplace in offices in the 1980s. We had several, including one for a very 'industrial' CMYK ribbon Mannesmann Tally MT490, which had a metal platen! It was a really impressive, fast dot matrix printer which we had hooked up to a VAX 11/750.

The band printer attached the VAX at my school was extremely loud and jarring. Much worse than a dot matrix printer.

<3 my experience https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35689516

You mentioned the fast feed of blank regions. We would sometimes get a job with form feeds ready for when an operator like you was in the back. When they walked behind the printer, a sufficient amount of form feeds would shoot out the paper fast enough to hit them. Not fast enough to hurt anyone, but it would startle you.

YES - these machines have personality!!

Sometimes there are error-runs, where whatever data analysis tool would be misconfigured, or would run on a schedule regardless of there being worthwhile data, and piles of the stuff would chug out.

We had TWO machines, opposite each other, in a chilled room with a raised-tile floor. Very 1960's / 70's chic environment to work in, to my mind. Noisy, lots of "machines that go PING!"

This reminds me of the acoustic covers the use at Jamba Juice, to mute the noise of the blenders.

> to mute the noise of the blenders.

They also contain the mess when an employee doesn’t get the juicer lid on quite right.

I almost read that as a new service from AWS “AWS Acoustic Hood”

I do similar with acoustic foam and my computer case. Basically built a case around the case. Now my mics in the audio studio never pick up fan background noise.

I read it as AWS Acoustic Hood

Hehe, same with me. And started thinking how they would have achieved that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com