A Visit To the Saragasso Sea – July 24, 1982

Since I got my TRS-80 Model III last year, I’ve been upgrading it on the cheap. This, of course, doesn’t mean cheap as in “rotten” it just means inexpensive. Inexpensive and slow and often frustrating. The FRUSTRATING is the subject of an other article, soon to be a major motion picture for release next summer.

This article is about getting an amazingly cheap printer. Finding my printer is another reason User Support Groups are so great, for without the people I’ve met in the three computer clubs I belong to (PACS, King of Prussia and Delaware Valley) there is no way I would have ever found out about Selectronics or had the guts to do what I did if I did.

Did you ever wonder where computers go when they die? It’s places like Selectronics, located in Southwest Philadelphia at 1206 S. Napa – a 1 1/4 lane “street.”

There are three parts to this establishment. The first is literally a junk yard – cases from dead mainframes, Western Union teletypes, piles of transformers and much unidentifiable miscellaneous junk. Inside is the stuff that works after a fashion. They buy out companies that go under or upgrade their data processing equipment and sell, repair or junk the stuff that comes in almost every day. The third section is where the guys hold forth who nurse all the castoffs into running computer parts.

Joe Scialdone escorted me down there one early summer day and I got a GE TermiNet 300 for $175.
[See this link to see a similar one in action, though my printer didn’t have a keyboard. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xL2m2CPhMWg ]

At first we thought it was serial but it turned out to be parallel – a bonus. We had to go back to their fearsome techs to help us find the proper order of the pins to my computer, since the TermiNet was set up for a Centronics, but it’s now happily putting out a letter quality page at 30 characters per second. Of course, since it’s an industrial printer, this isn’t something you carry in your briefcase. It weighs in at about 75 pounds – but you can be sure it doesn’t “walk” while it’s printing

The way Selectronics works is rather easy going. Someone will come in and ask for something and one of the guys will say, “Look over by the far wall near the piles of testing gear.” When the customer gets back with a hand full of goodies, the guys think a moment and give a price. All very informal.

Another convenience: just next door is a paper warehouse to supply your printer’s appetite.

Obviously, Selectronics or places like it, aren’t for the faint of heart – it takes guts to cut the input cable off a “new” printer so it will fit your computer but if you’re willing to take a chance to get what amounts to be a device that is in not bad condition at a ridiculous price – try your hand at a place like Selectronics – the Sargasso Sea of computers.

We went back another time for two 360 K, 2-sided floppy disk for my TRS-80 Model III, but that’s another story.