I think you have very accurately portrayed the experience of using an ImageWriter II! Nice to see that you’re getting some use out of that Classic II and thanks for the shout out!
The Classic II is great! It feels like I have my old original Classic back - which was my first personally owned Mac. I’m finally starting to get back to a good enough place to start making videos again.
So you actually have one more "II" device, the Apple Extended Keyboard II. Now your first ribbon was a colour cartridge. Those employed a foam rubber wheel to advance the ribbon. Sadly, those disintegrate with age, so what was happening was that you were printing over the the same spot of the ribbon, which is why it got so faint. Someone has taken apart their colour cartridge and replaced the foam with Danco 96728 #11 Rubber Faucet O-Rings, and it seemed to fix the problem. Also the colour ribbons aren't on a loop. They have a finite travel, so at the end of the ribbon, that's it.
Thanks for the tip about the original color ribbon. The good news about the IM 2 color ribbon is that MacEffects.com is selling replacements. I’ll have to order one and report back in a future video. maceffects.com/products/apple-imagewriter-ii-color-ribbon-cartridge
@@AlanGrassia Mark usually has limited supplies. He’s also stocking the ribbon itself, incase you want to replace the ribbon in an existing cartridge, but keep in mind you’ll need to replace the foam on the ribbon advance rollers with those washers I mentioned above
I think you have very accurately portrayed the experience of using an ImageWriter II! Nice to see that you’re getting some use out of that Classic II and thanks for the shout out!
The Classic II is great! It feels like I have my old original Classic back - which was my first personally owned Mac.
I’m finally starting to get back to a good enough place to start making videos again.
Love the IW2, thanks for posting! 😊- one minor correction @ 0:07 - as I’m sure you know, the Mac Classic II is definitely not from 1981! 😂
Adds to the overall jank level of the video. 😆
Hehe it’s all good - I enjoyed the video and spent many an hour printing school papers on mine!
(and making all those mistakes so many times I could anticipate them in your video! :) )
So you actually have one more "II" device, the Apple Extended Keyboard II.
Now your first ribbon was a colour cartridge. Those employed a foam rubber wheel to advance the ribbon. Sadly, those disintegrate with age, so what was happening was that you were printing over the the same spot of the ribbon, which is why it got so faint.
Someone has taken apart their colour cartridge and replaced the foam with Danco 96728 #11 Rubber Faucet O-Rings, and it seemed to fix the problem. Also the colour ribbons aren't on a loop. They have a finite travel, so at the end of the ribbon, that's it.
Thanks for the tip about the original color ribbon.
The good news about the IM 2 color ribbon is that MacEffects.com is selling replacements. I’ll have to order one and report back in a future video.
maceffects.com/products/apple-imagewriter-ii-color-ribbon-cartridge
@@AlanGrassia Mark usually has limited supplies. He’s also stocking the ribbon itself, incase you want to replace the ribbon in an existing cartridge, but keep in mind you’ll need to replace the foam on the ribbon advance rollers with those washers I mentioned above