The original idea was to connect a teletype machine to twitter for the Typewronger bookshop and typewriter emporium in Edinburgh, Scotland. The main problem was obtaining a teletype machine. A number of daisy wheel electronic typewriters produced in the 1980s had computer connection options as the only general printers available were dot matrix and for professional use a “letter quality” printer was prefered which tended to be a daisy wheel printer. Since the hardware for a daisy wheel typewriter incorporates a daisy wheel printer the option to use one machine to do two tasks was a great saving to customers. One of these was an obvious substitute for a teletype machine. Some research online suggests that during this period Nakajima of Japan made electronic typewriters that were branded by many different companies. The particular unit used for this project claims to be made in Western Germany but possibly only had final assembly performed there or was based on a japanese design. Therefore further research should be carried out but given the cross pollination at this time the details here may be relevant to other typewriters branded by other manufacturers. A Triumph Adler SE325 came up on eBay which has an 8 pin DIN connector on the back that was originally used to connect to the TA IFD1 interface box that would allow it to connect to a computer over serial or parallel. The IFD1 talked to the typewriter over a serial connection with 5V levels but the protocol for this communication was a proprietary one over which very low level commands were sent. Fortunately an article from “ST Computer” magazine in Germany from July 1988 explains much of this protocol and can be found online at : http://www.stcarchiv.de/stc1988/07/gabriele-9009-1 and: http://www.stcarchiv.de/stc1988/08/gabriele-9009-2

more info in the file: https://docs.google.com/document/d/15kNGhSe-AKXMzRQvbeOJih6rJQuM9lxPv2xkrmP1B_I/edit?usp=sharing

TODO make this README more useful!!