WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

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Warning!

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This video is

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UNSCRIPTED!

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The jacket is back because....

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because.

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Uh, so, say it's the 1980's --late 1980's
or early 1990's, and you've always wanted

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to be able to write your letters as a document,
save them to a floppy disk to edit later,

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but you've never been able to afford one of
these newfangled personal computers.

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Well, Smith Corona has got you covered with
this:

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This bad boy is the Smith Corona PWP-3200.

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It is a typewriter that has a VERY large LCD
display and most importantly, a floppy disk drive.

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Let's take a look at it.

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Alright so let's get into it.

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Obviously this was a Goodwill find, as you
can see by the sticker, I've had this for

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a number of years and you'll see a great example
of that in just a moment.

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So really, all this is is a daisy wheel printer
(and we'll look a bit more at that in a bit)

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but it's a daisy wheel printer which has been
integrated into a typewriter chassis with

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a floppy disk drive and a very basic computer.

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And, well first let's turn it on.

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Most typewriters don't turn on like this.

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[various mechanical sounds, like a printer
initializing]

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[beep]

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Alright, so now we're in.

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So immediately, what you get is you get this
word processing display.

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You'll notice that there's a switch here that
says type and word processing (WP), we're

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on word processing now so when I type stuff,
which is gonna be hard to do with where you

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are as the camera, you'll see it appears on
the screen, the typewriter is not actually

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typing anything.

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Now the beautiful thing about this, is that
you can write documents on the screen before

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you even print it, and it warns you if you've
made a typo.

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[fast double beep]

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It doesn't think "typo" is a word, so once you hit the
space bar it beeps at you to tell you, you

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may want to rethink that.

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Uh, also this is unique to Smith Corona apparently,
these functons "Word Eraser", there's a Registered

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Trademark thing on there so I'm guessing it's
some "special feature".

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If you hit Word Eraser it just deletes that
entire word.

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And if you hit Code and hit the same key,
it will erase the entire line.

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But what we're really here for is the word
processing function.

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So, on the right-hand side is a floppy disk
drive.

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Now I'm using what used to be Microsoft Works
because the floppy drive on here can only

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read 800kb formatted floppies, so any disk
that has been formatted as a high density

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disk it can't read, because the read/write
head is not strong enough to overwrite the

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high density disk.

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So if you have an unformatted high density
disk it can use it, but if it's ever been

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formatted it won't work.

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So this was one of very few 800kb non-high
density disks I had, and I am not in need

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of Microsoft Works for the Apple Macintosh,
so I went ahead and used this.

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So with it in the floppy drive, to get to
what's on the disk--all of these little menu

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items here, you can see they have an underscored
letter.

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To access them you hit "select" and hit that
letter.

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So we're gonna go to the disk menu, which
is select-D. And, weirdly, you hear it access

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the floppy but it hasn't actually done anything
yet.

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You actually have to select Save, Recall,
Erase, Rename, Join, Directory, or Other.

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So we're gonna hit recall.

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And now it brings up a directory of what is
on the disk to be recalled.

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So...just so that way you can see how much
of a dork I am, I'm gonna pull up this file.

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But first it's gonna warn me we have text
in memory, do we want to keep it or not?

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No.

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This was a homework assignment.

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When I was in my senior year of high school--I
believe that was the year I got this--I'm

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such a dork that I did some of my homework
assignments on this machine.

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So, if you want to just read this...this is
just so incredibly, ugh.

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It's not great.

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But, it shows you the power of a machine like
this.

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Now, sadly, and I bet a lot of people who
bought these machines were very disappointed

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in this, the actual computer--I've no idea
what system this is--but it is incredibly

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slow.

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If you want to just scroll through this, it
has to re-draw line by line.

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And it is not fast.

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If you hit Code and the down arrow it will
redraw the entire screen but even that--this

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is not fast at all.

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This is very, very slow.

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So yeah, it's useful in that you can review
an entire document before you print it.

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But this is not at all what I'd consider to
be.... ideal.

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Of any sort.

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Want to take a look at my writing when I was
in high school?

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There we go.

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So how does it actually type stuff?

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Or print stuff, I should say.

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Well first, I'm actually going to reboot it
here, so I'm gonna shut it off.

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'Cause I want to show you what's underneath.

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So this here is the daisy wheel, this is how
it's actually "typing".

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Each one of these little fins has an engraving
on it that it uses to punch onto the actual

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writing surface.

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This is sort of similar to the IBM Selectric
golf ball type thing, but nowhere near as,

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um, well honestly nowhere near as interesting.

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And also, these are plastic and I'm always
a little curious on how long these actually

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last.

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You can see there's a registration point here.

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And the idea with using the daisy wheels is
that you can change the typeface or the font

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of what exactly it's typing.

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So the daisy wheel just rests in here, and
then it will automatically catch.

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And this here is the ribbon that it uses to
type with.

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I do not have correction tape for this machine,
so... it's just what it is.

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Sadly it won't let you print anything with
the cover open so I'll have to close it, we'll

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get a better angle for you.

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Just like any typewriter you load it up with
paper before you begin.

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It's got markings here for what various different
paper sizes.

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The unlabeled one which continues through
here is gonna be your standard letter paper

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(in the US).

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So, with this machine, if we switch to typewriter
mode, which I've just moved the switch into,

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now it will go as you type.

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So if I start typing words

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[sound of typewriter,
with typo warning beep]

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I can't spell typing

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so it beeped at me.

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You can see...hopefully...that those words
are appearing on the page.

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[more typing sounds]

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I don't have any correction tape in here,

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otherwise I could go and actually correct
it back.

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If I hit "Word Eraser ®" it will attempt to
erase it.

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[rapid triple-clacks as it attempts to erase
the type]

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but there's no actual correction

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tape in there so it's not doing anything.

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But the thing is, let me move this up a little
bit.

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We're gonna go back into word processing mode.

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And I will call up that homework assignment.

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[floppy drive sounds]

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So this option here is to print.

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So if we select to print the document, it
gives you the option to setup which I believe

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changes the margins and stuff like that but
we're just gonna go with the standard and

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hit Print, and it will fire away.

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I lied.

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First it's gonna ask us if we want to print
the entire document or multiple copies.

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So we can do, it's giving me little---it's
pretty self explanatory so we're just gonna

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hit return.

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[a cacophony of clacking and rapid-fire typing
sounds begins]

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OK, so I hit delete to stop the print.

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But as you can see, it can print (type) faster
than anyone could actually type, though honestly

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not a lot faster.

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So, of course it's doing it with 100% accuracy,
but if you use this thing for printing out

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an 8 or 9 page letter, that process is gonna
be a few minutes.

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And it's probably, uh, I would not be surprised
if this takes well over two minutes to print

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one page.

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Which isn't exactly fast.

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So we'll get a little bit closer here.

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[typo beep]

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Oh my goodness.

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[keyboard sounds as Alec types without speaking
because he can't type and speak at the same time]

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[Another beep]

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See?

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Ugh.

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My goodness.

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[more speechless typing]

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[You should follow the words up there ^^^]

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Oh I hit caps lock.

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See, if I had done that on a regular typewriter
now we would be deep into the woods.

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But let's just go ahead and show you...remember
how I was saying that this is slow?

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Oh my goodness it's very slow.

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Say I want to erase "IF YOU WANT TO BE SURE
T".

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So in order to do that I could press and hold
Backspace or I could hit the "Word Eraser ®"

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key, let's see that would be onetwothreefour
five six, seven times.

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I'm gonna hit it seven times and watch how
long it takes it to actually process that.

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Still goin'.

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Yeah that's...that's not exactly what I'd
call fast.

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I don't know about you but, uh, that seems
really painful, actually.

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But to continue with this little demonstration,
if we select Disk.

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What we can do is we can save this.

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And it just wants you to give it a name.

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And I still have--Oh!

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That's an interesting point.

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We'll get back to that in a second.

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I'm just gonna call it "NAMEHJ".

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And now it's saved, so if you back to the
disk menu, we can recall something.

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We'll recall "Palindrome".

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Gonna dismiss what's in memory because we
saved it to the disk.

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I really don't know what this document is,
but now we can go back to what we were working on.

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We'll have to scroll down to get to it, though.

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Again, we'll erase what's in memory.

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And now, there we're back to what we were
doing.

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Now obviously if you had an actual computer
this would be a lot easier.

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And faster.

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But if you had a limited budget, these were
being sold up until at the very latest--or

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the very earliest 1993.

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I saw a listing for these for sale and they
were less than $300.

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So if you were on a tight budget and you wanted
to be able to have many of the features of

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a word processor but didn't have your own
computer, something like this might actually

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be a pretty good idea.

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What I wanted to go back to was, if you saw
when I was saving the file name, it was inserting

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special characters even though I was just
touching numbers.

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Now, that's because this emulates the way
the caps lock key works on older typewriters.

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A couple odd things about the keyboard you
may notice are that comma has got two commas

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on there, rather than having a special character
and the comma like you'd expect today, it's

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got two commas.

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Just as this is two periods.

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That's because on older typewriters it wasn't
"caps lock" it was "SHIFT lock".

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And that's why this key the default is simply
"lock" and "caps lock" is an option.

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So if I hit lock, and unfortunately the light
in the key does not work, you'll see that

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I type--oh, apparently I haven't actually
turned it on, there we go--as I type it's

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all capital letters, but the period and comma
stay period and comma because there's two

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of them.

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But any time I hit a number, I'm gonna get
a special character because I don't have "caps

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lock" on I have "SHIFT lock" on.

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So now every key is shifted.

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That's because in the days of manual typewriters
like this, when you hit shift the entire carriage

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is lowered.

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That's actually why it's called the shift
key because it shifts the carriage down.

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And you can see when you get close up that
the capital letters are all on the...well,

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let's see I should actually look before I
do a closeup...OK.

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So the capital letters are all at the top
of each of these strikers which means that

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when it's shifted down the top is what hits
the paper, and when it's not shifted the bottom

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is what hits the paper.

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And because the platen is curved, even when
you're, uh, the top will miss the paper because

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it's farther away from it.

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So on a typewriter like this when you engage
shift lock which is this button here, it simply

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holds the carriage in the down position.

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So if you were to type anything, it would
always be the top of the row because you're

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going to have shift lock engaged.

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The typewriter, because this is mechanical,
it can't decide to only print numbers as numbers,

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it's going to hit "!, ", #, $, %" et cetera,
just as it's gonna hit the "@" vs the "¢" over here.

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And yes, "@" keys were on typewriters like
this.

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That is not something that email created,
email uses the "@" key because it was a key

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nobody used.

00:16:04.000 --> 00:16:09.520
[sound of clickity clackity typing from an
old-fashioned typewriter]

00:16:09.520 --> 00:16:12.560
[again, you should be looking up there^^^]

00:16:16.920 --> 00:16:19.800
[a lovely gentle ding from the bell]

00:16:31.850 --> 00:16:36.850
So I hope you enjoyed this video into the
Smith Corona PWP-3200 personal word processor.

00:16:36.850 --> 00:16:39.410
Thanks so much for watching, I do hope you
enjoyed the video.

00:16:39.410 --> 00:16:42.640
Of course thank you to everyone who supports
the channel on Patreon.

00:16:42.640 --> 00:16:45.870
If you're interested in joining the Patreon
supporters out there, please feel free to

00:16:45.870 --> 00:16:47.000
check out this link.

00:16:47.000 --> 00:16:52.070
I'm gonna have a lot more videos coming soon--I
finally was able to clear out my obligations,

00:16:52.070 --> 00:16:55.019
and what you see behind me is nearly complete.

00:16:55.019 --> 00:16:57.860
You'll be seeing the full extent of it in
the next video.

00:16:57.860 --> 00:16:59.360
Thanks for watching!