Can I just trash an old Imagewriter or is there something to remove first?

To the best of my knowledge, those printers contain no hazardous waste, so they could (depending on your local regulations - check with your city government) be put in the trash. That said, though, it's best to avoid putting anything in a landfill if it can be avoided, so you might check around and see if any used computer store in your area could use them for parts. Check also with any recycling services in your area to see if they'll take them to reclaim any of the materials. There are also national recycling programs, such as this one:

http://www.recycleapc.com/apple/index.asp

There is a charge with such programs, but dumping stuff in a landfill also has a cost; it's just hidden in the various taxes and in the unallocated costs we all incur for resource waste and environmental degradation.

Regards.

If there's a Craiglist city near you there might be somebody interested in having them for free. Oddly enough there are still people out there running old printers like that since they never actually felt they needed to upgrade!

Those printers are pretty indestructible.

I print my household checks using Quicken with an ImageWriter II. I can keep the checks loaded all the time and just make the printer not ready to avoid dumping kids game pictures on the checks.

Mine has a LocalTalk option card and uses a farallon AppleTalk-over-Ethernet to Appletalk/LocalTalk converter. About the only change I had to make was picking a font that was a little bolder than plain Helvetica or New York. And ordering the pinfeed checks, of course.

Message was edited by: Grant Bennet-Alder

Another option to give them away, is the Rochester Freecyclee @ http://groups.yahoo.com/group/RochesterNY_Freecycle/

 Cheers, Tom 😉