Texas Instruments PC-100A cradle

The PC-100A printing cradle followed the PC-100 immediately. It can be used with the SR-52, SR-56, TI-58 and TI-59 (not the TI-57). Its thermal printer has 64 alphabetic, numeric and special characters which can be printed at the rate of 60 characters per second. Up to 20 characters can be printed per line on 2.5 inch wide thermal paper. 

The PC-100A can also be used to print, list or trace program steps as an aid to debugging. 
The PC-100A cradle also had some more features than just the printer. It functions as a power-adapter and also has a storage/charging compartment where you can charge the battery pack. The calculator (and batterypack compartment) is locked solidly to the cradle with the use of a key. 

Don't miss the SR-60.

Although not officially supported by TI, several people were able to use the PC-100A with SR-51 and SR-51A calculators by putting the PC-100A in SR-52 mode. Some people found that the print mode worked fine with their SR-51's but never could get the trace mode to work, getting a "1" and a "?" on the printout.
The SR-51-II cannot be connected to the PC-100A because of a redesign of the battery compartment.
Although the SR-50A has a print cradle connector similar to the SR-51, and fits on the printer, apparantly it was not preprogrammed for printout.

The successor of the PC-100A is the PC-100C which lacks the switch that makes it compatible with the SR-52 and SR-56. The PC-100B was only a short time available, it was a mixture of the old and new cradle.

If you have additions to the above article please email: joerg@datamath.org.

© Joerg Woerner, January 3, 2002. No reprints without written permission.