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61

He doesn’t. If you could find a TRS-80 thermal printer to buy today, you’d be a better searcher than I :slight_smile:

Edit: If you could find a NEW TRS-80 thermal printer to buy today, you’d be a better searcher than I

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@ Brett - [url]http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Tandy-Radio-Shack-TRS-80-TP-10-Serial-Thermal-Printer-for-COCO-Tested-/172114294876[/url]

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ok, I updated my post :slight_smile: You would only implement something where you have a plentiful source of new and reasonably priced replacements.

I am pretty sure I can read @ mtylerjr’s posts and when he said TRS-80, he was definetly pulling our legs.

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Well, to print out the output of the integrated fortran 77 interpreter (which I assume this new mainboard will have) :smiley:

:whistle:

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Here is a proposed enclosure…i am releasing the board first then i will create the enclosure.

Anyone have opinions on whether i should open source the hardware?

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To open source or not to open source… that is the question.

Personally, I think of it this way. Is there any value in the designs, if someone had them and went to make a one-off?

If you think you want to make and sell a bunch (or a lot) of them, then there’s a balance you need to have which is the cost for someone else doing a one-off versus buying yours pre-made. If there is going to be a large price delta to do a one-off versus buying one off you, then open source makes sense as it’s still cheaper to buy yours. If you aren’t buying in quantities that drives your cost down (or you aim for too high a margin) then you may find that a scenario where you open source it but after you’ve sold your stock might work for you; you get to make your return on investment, and then others can do what they want. Or there may be really good design thoughts/ideas that you want to avoid showing off - so that becomes the reason to stay closed. Or the fourth option - but if you were this way inclined you wouldn’t have asked - there are some people that believe the open source community will reward those who release things openly, and will buy your item no matter what, so they would always open source their creations.

So, it’s all up to you :slight_smile: