Brother LW series
The LW series is a succession of different typewriter models with floppy disk drives from the office machine manufacturer Brother .
The LW range
As part of the LW series, the office machine manufacturer Brother launched several typewriters under the type designation LW in Germany and Europe from the 1990s (as a successor to the WP series from the late 1980s). The models mentioned in the list are currently known. The same typewriters continued to be introduced and sold on the American market under the already established name WP series (for Word Processor). Expand the capabilities of the daisy wheel - typewriter to the capabilities of a complex word processing and storage on external media (mainly 3.5 "disk that own Brother in the first LW typewriters to 240 kB format in the later DOS compatible LW Typewriters can be formatted in DD or HD format on DOS / Windows computers.) Form letters, address management and frame design are also possible. A simple spreadsheet was also offered, which first had to be purchased separately, in the later models ( In the days of DOS -based computers, they offered the main advantage of a fully functional system at the price of an upscale typewriter without extensive system configuration, which at that time required much more specialist knowledge than today Price range available.This range of models was made in favor of the simpler ones conventional typewriters of the AX series.
Generations
| 1st GENERATION approx. 1991-1995 |
2nd GENERATION approx. 1995-2001 |
3rd GENERATION approx. 1997-1998 |
4th GENERATION approx. 1998-2002 |
|---|---|---|---|
| LW-10 | LW-100 | LW-700i | LW-810ic / 810icBL |
| LW-20 | LW-200 | LW-710i / 710ic | LW-830ic |
| LW-30/35 | LW-350 | LW-730i | LW-840ic |
| LW-400/450 | LW-600i ("intermediate model") until approx. 1997 |
LW-750ic until approx. 2001 |
Note: "i" = models with ink printing mechanism; "C" = models with color ink printing (Color)
All other (earlier) models use type wheel printing mechanisms .
The first to third generations were sold on the American market as the WP (Word Processor) series, the fourth generation as the PDP series. PDP stands for Personal Desktop Publisher. A three-digit number combination is followed by CJ for Color Jet, as an indication of the color ink printing process used. Except for the LW-10, all models have a floppy disk drive. In contrast to the other models with floppy disk drives, the LW-20, LW-30, LW-400 and LW-100 are not DOS-compatible, recognizable by the 240 kB diskette format that cannot be read by the computer. LW-400, LW-450, LW-730i, LW-750ic and LW-830ic are models with an external monitor that lack the built-in display.
Type variants
Since the late 1980s, the writing systems have been offered under different type names. Whereby the type designation WP series established itself on the American market, to which many of the LW series typewriters offered on the German and European markets belong. Therefore, a German typewriter in the LW series can only be distinguished from its largely identical US sister in the WP series by the different keyboard layout and the different system software versions.
The type designation WP (Word Processor) was later replaced on the US market by PDP (Personal Desktop Publisher). In Germany and Europe, the writing systems of the American PDP series continued to be marketed under the already established name of the LW series. (Applies to the models of the LW series 8xx).
In the late 1980s, the Brother WP-1 was available on the German and European market, which was followed by a number of identical models. Since these models could not establish themselves on the German and European market as expected, the type designation WP series for the subsequent writing systems was replaced by LW series, which was retained until these writing systems were discontinued.
A distinction can be made between different designs, which include the same design elements and software versions for the respective generation of writing systems. The initially rectangular design of the early machines was followed by more and more flowing forms of the later models, as the design taste changed over the course of the approximately twelve years in which the LW series was on the market.
The most obvious difference is the use of a liquid crystal display of various sizes (originally 7 or 14 lines, later 4, 7 or 14 lines) or a monitor to be connected externally (originally 20 lines). The monitor models do not have an internal display, so they can only be used in full with an external monitor.
The first models in particular can be used in both direct typewriter mode and word processing mode. The typewriter mode is comparable to that of a conventional typewriter, in which a character is immediately printed on the paper at the touch of a button. In the word processing mode, the printout only takes place when the print command is given, as with the computer. As an intermediate step, there is the line-by-line printout, through which a line of text can be written and corrected before it is printed. Printing takes place when the line feed is pressed (return key).
Except for the LW-10, all typewriters in the LW series have an integrated floppy disk drive. A distinction must be made between the machines with Brother's own 240 kB format and the DOS-compatible format on DD and sometimes also HD disks. The LW series typewriters cannot be used with ED disks and the 100MB disk format.
The so-called DOS-compatible text systems support FAT -formatted floppy disks with formatted text files. In the early machines - for example LW-35 - DD disks (720 kB), later - for example LW-350 - also HD disks (1.44 MB) can be used. The proprietary ".wpt" file format is not compatible with the formats of other word processing programs. However, the texts are compatible with DOS in the ASCII standard character set ; conversion to text files is supported, with loss of all formatting features.
The models LW-100/200/350 are more recent models of the model version with the type wheel called "Daisy Wheel". In the following models (third and fourth generation) an inkjet printing mechanism is used to counter the inkjet printers that are increasingly common during production. Typewriter mode and line-by-line printouts are no longer necessary.
The last models are the LW-750ic to LW-840ic typewriters. The LW-840ic flat screen model was the last to be offered until 2002. The other models were delivered with a built-in color display or with a monitor (color or black and white). They have a 300 x 300 dpi ink printer and print in color. Simple drawings can be made or clip art can be used depending on the model . Some models offer a simple spreadsheet and import of Lotus 1-2-3 files. As before, however, texts can only be exchanged using ASCII files.
Non-interchangeability of the data in the first LW model series
The LW-20/30, LW-400 and LW-100 (as well as the LW-10 with 70 kB memory card drive) belong to the generations of LW models that are not DOS compatible. An announced conversion program that was supposed to enable DOS compatibility never came onto the market in Germany. With the exception of the LW-10, any non-DOS-compatible typewriter in the LW series can use a 240 kB formatted diskette, but this cannot be read or edited in the newer models of the LW series or in standard computers. Text data from LW-20/30/400/100 on 240 kB format floppy disks can therefore only be exchanged with one another. The LW-10 has a memory card drive that can be used for credit card-sized memory cards of around 70 kB. An internal memory of 30 kB is also available, but the data cannot be exchanged with DOS-compatible typewriters either.
Conversion problems with DOS-compatible LW models
From LW-35/450 onwards DOS- formatted standard disks (only 2DD-design in 720 kB-format) are used for the exchange with MS-DOS -compatible computers. The supplied conversion program only creates unformatted ASCII text files, whose umlauts and special characters are only retained under DOS, but not under Windows or other operating systems.
The formatting characteristics of the layout (page breaks, text formatting, tables, headers and footers, etc.) are also lost. In order to be able to continue using the texts on other platforms or systems with other character sets, at least the additional conversion of the DOS special characters (DOS coding: character set table 850, multilingual or Latin I or "IBM 850") with a suitable program ( under Linux e.g. Recode or Kate ) necessary. This entry must be made manually, as the document format does not include an attribute for the character set of the type wheel, which can differ in international models depending on the country and font used (type wheels for German: "08" or "08F", other special characters are with type wheels the identifier "international" or "symbol" possible). The type wheel change is possible with a manual stop attribute (the typewriter stops automatically when the step size is changed), but it is up to the typewriter whether and which suitable type wheel is used and how special characters are manually replaced or changed when converting the document Font changes are reformatted during conversion. Some type wheel fonts (e.g. Quadro, Brougham) are not available for the computer, or only similarly or under different names.
A general problem with typewriter conversion is the overprinting of a second character, which is common with typewriters, by means of manual regression, which cannot generally be converted accordingly on the computer. Depending on the conversion method, only the first character is converted or the two characters are reproduced one after the other. Only a few special characters such as the “E” with grave accent or acute accent (È, É) have their own coding in the document.
A conversion with preservation of the text formatting and the layout with on-board resources is not possible. However, Windows software from a third party is known ( FileMerlin or its predecessor Wordport ), which removes the files from outdated word processing systems, e.g. B. converted to Word or " Rich Text Format " files. The problem of font formatting and possible character set changes even during a document is also present here due to the lack of appropriate source text attributes. In addition, not all layout settings can be transferred true to the original with these programs. For example, there are problems with shifting page breaks or multi-column printing.
Web links
- Brother (official German website)
- Model range ( Memento from February 24, 1999 in the Internet Archive ) (excerpt from a web archive) until around December 1998
Individual evidence
- ^ Extract from a price list ( Memento from April 21, 2001 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Product description of the LW-840ic model ( Memento from April 22, 1999 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Manual, Chapter 3.1. (P. 21), according to which single-sided floppy disks and high density (HD) cannot be used, as well as appendix chapter 11.7. (P. 261) for model LW-35, German
- ↑ Manual, Appendix, Chapter 11.1. (Pp. 233–236) for model LW-35, German
- ↑ Product page with format list ( Memento of the original dated November 22, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. of the supported text formats
