Rare Vintage Ligo Research ANGEL Intelligent Buffer, Excellent Condition, Original Packaging
Back in the CP/M and DOS days, printing a document tied up your computer until the printing was complete, and printers back then were SLOW. If you did more than occasional printing, it was a nuisance, especially when the printer jammed or the fan-fold paper tore, requiring a reprint of one or more pages. Because of this, companies introduced various devices to offload the printing - your computer could quickly "print" to the device, which would store the output, then the device would deal with the (possibly very slow) printer while your computer was free to continue with other work. For example, in the advertisement for the device in this listing, they quote a user saying "Without [the device] it takes 30 minutes to print 210 doctors' requisition forms. With [the device] installed, my computer is free after 90 seconds."The Ligo ANGEL intelligent buffer was one such device. It not only allowed you to re-print pages or entire documents, it could handle both parallel and serial connections, allowing you to mix-and-match (e.g. if you had a serial printer but only a parallel port on your computer, no problem - you "print" to the device with your parallel connection, and it manages the slow serial connection to the printer). I've included an advertisement from the March 1983 issue of Byte Magazine, which has additional details about the product. We bought this one sometime in 1983-1984.Back in the early 80s, we were running a timesharing service on a minicomputer, and had to do a fair amount of printing for our customers. We bought this Ligo ANGEL device to see if it could help speed things along. It worked quite well, but didn't really meet our needs, and we ended up buying some very expensive high-speed printers instead. This ANGEL device was used a few times in testing, then boxed up and basically forgotten. It has been in my possession, boxed, in my smoke-free climate-controlled office, for the past 40+ years - I am effectively the original owner. Before listing it here, I tested it, and it still works perfectly. (NOTE: I haven't owned a parallel or serial printer for many years, so in this case, testing was done using serial connections to a laptop. Parallel connections were not tested, but those were working perfectly when the unit was tested back in the 1980s, and I have no reason to believe that has changed.) Memory self-test passes, and power-up message prints:
ANGEL V5.7 Copyright @1983 LigoUSA size 64K
The item for sale is a rare, vintage, Ligo Research ANGEL Intelligent Buffer in excellent condition, including the ANGEL device, power supply, operating manual, quick reference card, and original packaging from the manufacturer. Items are all original and have been tested, as noted above. The ANGEL device has only been used a few times. The operating manual and quick reference card have yellowed slightly with age, but are completely readable.
What I find interesting is that while these were once quite common, I can find almost no reference to them on the web, and no prior sales to help determine a fair price. That tells me this is either a rare and priceless museum piece, or a forgotten and worthless hunk of e-waste. You tell me - if you have some notion of what this should be worth, send me a message using the "contact seller" link at the top of the page. If I see any sort of trend, I will re-list the item, priced accordingly. (Of course, if you think it's worth more than my current price, then by all means, just buy it!)Step right up and own a piece of computing history!Search Keywords: RS-232 RS232 baud Serial Parallel rare vintage Ligo Research ANGEL Intelligent Buffer Printer