[joshu]

on older plotters:

there were many manufacturers. the ones that seem to be higher quality were HP and Roland. alps made a tiny one that was repackaged for commodore, atari, etc. and there were a plethora of other manufacturers (graphtec, houston instruments, and so on)

check ebay for "pen plotter" but beware that many are quite large and shipping will be expensive.

i currently have a HP DXL 7575a (a large roller plotter) and a Roland DXY-1150 (small flatbed). the roland was shipped but the hp i had to pick up locally. roland still has the manual on the site for the 1150, but it required a wacky power supply that took some effort to find. for HP stuff make sure it has RS232 and not HP-IB interfaces or whatever wacky stuff. also, different plotters used different languages. Roland's RDGL and HP's HPGL were easy enough to implement directly from the documentation...

many of them don't work because various belts have died. my HP fired right up.

one ongoing concern is that pens are no longer made so you have to fight over scraps on ebay.

modern plotters:

get an axidraw. it is nice and lets you use standard pens.