lee_c

Wow, this brings back memories. I was the guy that designed the digital electronics for the Omni 840. Texas Instruments was my first job out of college - from 1978-1981. I started out on a cost reduction project for the 810/820 printers, then designed some test fixtures for these printers for manufacturing, then was assigned to the 840 project as the microprocessor/digital design engineer. I did the digital design and as I recall a guy by the name of Mike Badger did most of the analog design, a room-mate of mine - PJ Pipitone, another college rookie - and Jeff ??? (Schultz?) did the mechanical design, Bill ??? (Bray?) did the power supply, and Mike Gleason did the bulk of the firmware programming. The project was headed up by a guy named Bob Collier - never liked the guy. We used to call him Bargain Bob behind his back. The 840 was TI's 1st attempt at building a low-cost impact printer - to compete against Epson and Brother. To be honest, it was never really successful. We cut a lot of corners to make it as cheap as possible. That's why we called our boss Bargain Bob. Let's see - if memory serves, it had a Zilog Z8 8-bit microprocessor, and some related Zilog parts - a UART for the serial port, and maybe a DMA controller. I remember that PJ designed a neat clutch mechanism for the ribbon cartridge, to keep the ribbon moving in one direction while the carriage moved left and right. Got a patent for it. Another neat cost cutting feature was a mostly 1-piece injection-molded chassis that all the mechanicals attached to. Saved a lot of parts and made manufacturing easier. After we launched the 840 I decided I didn't like Houston summers anymore and moved back east. But, it was a great learning experience.