Brand NEW IBM PC AT + Model M! Unboxing & Setup

[HighVoltage]

Around 2000, 2001 I had the opportunity to acquire a tractor trailer full of used Lexmark dot matrix printers, some of them in basically new condition, others smashed to bits and some in between. I paid $250 for the lot and filled half the garage and our shed up with them.

What a great story you have to tell.

In the days of the IBM AT, the standard printer was the EPSON FX (at leas in Germany)
But by far the best DOT Matrix printer was made by OKI, the "Data Microline"
And I think they are still being made, since I see them from time to time on ebay

[SeanB]

OKI are still being made and sold, or at least I bought new ones 2 years ago, and can still get ribbons. They replaced Seikosha SP2000 series ones as the print heads wore out. Going to be fun to find a dot matrix printer with USB soon, as the PC that drives them gets upgraded, or sit there with PCI expansion cards to give a parallel port to drive them.

[timb]

The code name for the keyboard during development and manufacture was Naples. The keyboard was made in Lexington, Kentucky. As were the IBM PC printers. The Lexington plant was sold off as a new company called Lexmark around 1990.

Around 2000, 2001 I had the opportunity to acquire a tractor trailer full of used Lexmark dot matrix printers, some of them in basically new condition, others smashed to bits and some in between. I paid $250 for the lot and filled half the garage and our shed up with them.

Over the course of a year, I sold nearly 200 printers at $100 a pop. Apparently they were used by certain government offices (because dot matrix could do carbon copies and form feed) and since that model was no longer being produced and new dot matrix printers were becoming increasingly rare (and expensive), they were buying used versions of that particular model where they could find them. (That way software didn't have to be changed and employees didn't have to be retrained.)

I sold off the new and good condition ones first, then started repairing the rougher ones with working bits from the smashed units.

I was 16 and had just gotten my driver's license. That $250 investment ended up buying me a new car. Thanks Lexmark!

Anyway, the printers were pretty high quality and very well built. They weren't bad to service, either.

(I ended up with a large stockpile of parts for that printer and for a couple of years after I was paid to repair broken printers. They would stockpile them until they had about 10-15 broken units and ship them to me in a crate, I'd fix them and ship them back. That was a nice bonus.)

Fantastic story! You were either very lucky or had a great deal of foresight. For a young bloke, you did very well. Micheal Dell started his road to becoming a 20 times over BILLIONAIRE based upon similar luck or foresight. He started out buying Seagate hard drives when he was at uni and upgrading/replacing them in IBM PC's for a fraction of what IBM was charging. The rest is history.

I had started listening to a lot of audiobooks in 1999 when Audible first came out, and I listened to Micheal Dell's autobiography/business book and it did inspire me to go into business for myself. I actually used some of the printer money to start my web hosting business in 2002. I ended up growing it for about 6 years before I got a good offer and sold it. All because of some old printers.

That's pretty cool that IBM gave out bonuses for saving them money. It's been my experience that's rare.