There's a lever inside on the left side (in front of the paper) that you can adjust to move the head and ribbon away from the paper. This may help reduce the smearing.
I just measured it with an app on my smartphone: up to 95 dB without the cover, significantly better with the cover, but still a pain in the ass... aaah, the pleasant sound of ink jet and laser printers LOL
I remember we once had a field trip in school to some government place (in the 80ies). And they had a dot matrix printer, which could print a whole line in one go (the print head was as wide as the page). Boy, that thing was loud - but fast. At least back then it was considered blazing fast.
@@Grim-oc9fw It does. It stops the smearing of the ribbon against the paper. I just dusted off my printer in test mode and confirmed. All the way in and the ribbon rubs a line on the paper. A few notches back and it stops. Doesn't seem to do anything to the printed characters - it's just ribbon clearance.
If I remember right, I had an Epson connected to my good old Atari ST during my studies. I nicknamed it "Nadelfräse", in english "needle milling machine", because of the infernal noises it made. And nowadays we still use a dot matrix printer to print out the messages from our process control system in a waste water treatment facility.
My Seikosha SL96 is still going strong. I was lucky enough to find a new old stock colour ribbon a few years back after the old one gave up after 24 years. I wish the ink on modern printer's would last that long 🖨️😉
The ink replenishment made me laugh. I went through many shenanigans trying to refill that ink when i was 10, so that I could continue printing huge banners for no apparent reason.
One very nice thing about the old printers having their own ROM (and I guess a sort of processor), is that they don't require any drivers to work. The computer just outputs data to the printer, and it takes care of all the printing itself.
I had an 802, actually I still do, including a few NOS ribbons. Just haven't used it in a while. I bought a job lot of C64 stuff in about 1995, after our neighbours dropped off a C64 with a 1541 on our door mat. "You like old stuff, don't you?". The 802 had the major advantage of a push tractor feed instead of a pull like the 801, which means you waste a page of paper for every print job. The MPS-1000 even had a push/pull feeder IIRC. Pull was good for intricate or stiff materials like labels.
My C64 printer was a star nx-10 if I recall. I did run into one of these once though, the printer actually only had 1 tall “pin” - there’s a bar behind the ink+paper with sharp bumps on it that rotates crazy fast, and determines where that “unihammer” makes a dot vertically, making it very noisy too!
Great stuff... Acquired one of these printers in a bundle of Commodore stuff over a year ago. Came to me in original box with original receipt and warranty card. After watching your video I feel tempted to give it a bit of a clean and see if I can get it to print something...
Regarding pronunciation of Japanese words (Seikosha) written in latin letters (Romaji): - single mostly vowels like you do in German, just the U usually sounds more like a short Ü - consonants are pronounced as they are in English - combined vowels are mostly spoken semi seperately (sE-I-kO-shA) as Japanese is a syllable based language So, when you first said Seikosha, it was almost pretty bang on just by instinct. Trust your instincts! If you're off, I'm pretty sure you'll get a "Someone's wrong on the interwebs!" soon enough 😉
Thanks for the walk down memory lane. You could get a rom upgrade back in the day to print the tails, might look on archive.org for that or see if Adrian Black has a printer he could make a rom image for you. Also, there is a silver lever on the inside left of the printer to adjust the print head gap to the paper, when putting in a new ribbon, you often had to back off the gap to allow for the fuzzy goodness of a fresh ribbon. Great vid, thanks again!
That was the sequel to my Vic 1525.... the 1525 / Gorilla Banana / Tandy DMP100 were all the same Seikosha, iirc. The MPS-801 was probably my favorite printer.
Just picked up one of those for $5 at an estate sale. Our preferred printer back then for the C64 was the Epson FX-80 with a Cardco parallel printer adapter. I still have the adapter but alas the printer long ago met the trash bin when inkjets came out.
Wow! That sound takes me back! I've got a Commodore MPS1250 printer with a combined Centronics and Commodore interface plug in module. I could use it with my Commodore 64 AND my Amiga 500! :-)
Oh man, I still remember when we got our C64 printer... I went out and bought The Print Shop just to be able to print cool things. Today people wouldn't understand the struggle of waiting 5 min to print something ..lol
Ah the joys of dot matrix. I remember printer hoods used to reduce (somewhat) that noise. They still use dot matrix where they need carbon copies (on multi-part paper). I guess legally it is a carbon copy rather than alleged 2nd print of page... That's probably why you still have DMs and their supplies. Thanks for taking me back down memory lane :-)
I remember having my Commodore DM printer. This is probably the exact model but I am not sure of that. Cool! I am talking about 1985, when I was online with it too, using Q-Link and 300 baud modem. Q-Link turned into AOL in the future from there.
Also my first printer, bought to use with my Commodore 64. I recall that third party companies were advertising replacement ROMs that would give true descenders (I don't recall if they also did bi-directional printing). My second printer was an Epson LX-86, used with my Amiga, a fair step up in quality.
It's nice to see a Commodore PRINTER taking front & centre -- either you're nostalgic about the sound of a dot matrix head, or you never want to hear it again! I was laughing during your re-inking effort with the sponges, because it reminded me of a seemingly ridiculous hack that we used in a zero-budget computer lab running dot matrix printers in the 1990s (and when I say zero budget, I mean none for cartridges OR ink). We would grab the nearest black ball-point pen, remove the ink cartridge and cut the ball point off, effectively making a straw filled with ink. You would put the top end between your lips and slowly blow all the ink out onto the ribbon while turning the knob to run it through its loop. No mess, and surprisingly effective. I can't attest to pen ink being good for the print head in the long run -- but I don't recall our printers ever breaking down, either.
I already used stamp ink in the '80s, in order to save my little money (being a teenager, I always ran out of money those days LOL)! I use to directly add ink on the ribbon, without to use any sponge, leaving the ribbon pretty wet. You can also use ink with a different color, like blue and maybe red. Today I'm using blue ink, since it was what I had at home.
Dot matrix printers are definitely still in use. I've seen brand new Okidata Microline printers...and they're not cheap! I can imagine a dot matrix printer being useful for a lot of quick prints where cheaper cost is more important, like auto repair shops, doctor's offices, etc. Inkjet cartridges are expensive and add up very quickly. Dot matrix printers might be an option in that case if super high quality prints aren't needed.
Pöh. Der klingt ja harmlos. Mein erster Drucker war ein DDR-Import der Marke PRÄSIDENT vom VEB Robotron. Das Teil war gebaut wie ein Panzer und besaß, dem Klang nach zu urteilen, ein zum Druckkopf umfunktioniertes Flakgeschütz aus NVA-Beständen.
@@Shifter-1040ST Da gibts ein paar Spezialitäten... ich besitze einen Flachbettscanner, bei dem ich schwöre, dass die Ingenieure es irgendwie geschafft haben, das Prinzip des Nadeldruckers umzukehren und Bilder mechanisch abzutasten! :-D Macht einen Höllenkrawall, und der Radau ändert sich, je nachdem, ob der Schlitten nur leer bewegt wird oder abgetastet.
This puts me waaay back. We had a MPS-801 in school back in the days. My first printer experience. Later I owned a MPS-1200. The sound of those printers is unmatched. * swrrreeeet*swrrreeeet*swrrreeeet*swwwt*swwwt*swwwt*krrrllt * ( * print*print*print*feed*feed*feed*jam * 😆 )
Basic and loud model GP500(A) by Seikosha, my first printer for the Commodore plus/4. The Original had a different connector that needed an interface (Wiesemann) for use with Commodore.
The graphics print needs a few passes per line because the printer's buffer is so small. This effect is most noticeable when you print out a program listing (OPEN1,4:CMD1:LIST) because the computer basically locks up until the print is nearly complete - only then do you get READY and your cursor back. Upgrading to an MPS-1200 blew my mind. Faster, quieter, and prints in both directions! Plus the buffer was larger, so I got my cursor back sooner. But watching this video makes me want to lug the MPS-801 out of the closet and give it a go for awhile.
PAH. MPS 801 was for the nerds without style!!! Nerds with style had a MS 802!!! HA³ And nerds with real style modded their MPS 802 to print GFX³ GALORE. And expert engineers modded the printer... switch it on... without effect and conclude they broke it... only to find out plugging a power chord is somehow mandatory.
Ah, 9 pin print-head, unidirectional and very noisy, I used to print my homework out on an MPS -1000 hooked up to my C64 running Easy Script, when I upgraded to an Amiga I kept the printer because it also had a standard centronics interface, it lasted quite a while until i managed to get a HP Laserjet 4.
I had the Comrex/Citizen CR-220, which I think was the OEM for this thing. I didn't like this printer, even for the time it was very rudimentary and unreliable. The electronics failed often. I was lucky enough to find a Commodore 1526 soon after.
Looks like from the manual that the printer has 90 Bytes of [printer] buffer memory. So even less memory than the MOS/CSG RIOT chip famously used in the Atari 2600 VCS. I wonder if anyone created a buffer RAM upgrade for this printer [or the other Seikosha versions of this printer]...
I downloaded a couple fonts (from, I think, dafont.com) and modified them just a little so they didn't have descenders and would look more like my old 1525/mps801. I wasn't satisfied.. so I bought a Gorilla Banana... need to get paper before I can test it, though...
I had a Seikosha SP-1000-VC. Not bottom-end, like this 801; but not high end like the best Epsons; but a damn fine reliable workhorse which never failed
that dreadful sound ... I hoped never to hear again ... had a Seikosha (Seiko) B/W Printer back then hooked to my trusty C128 ... my rich friend had a Star 24 pin dot matrix color printer ... he could print in color (!) ... of course from his Amiga
Why not adjusting the print head distance? Or did i miss the part of the video where you explained that lever? It guess it would have helped a lot putting it lower on the dry ribbon and lifting it from the paper after the refill to reduce smearing.
My 1st n fave commodore 8bit printer. Had another a while after I got back into commodore bot not atm :-( Over here in north america the ribbons are used in a timestamp / punchcard system (I think) so they're still available but much more expensive than the old days. Funny thing I remember seeing classivied ads in magazines back in the 80's that had a replacement rom for these (probly a character rom) that allowed true descenders. Haven't been able to locate them in the past few years though.
This was my first printer too! The trick on these ink cartridges was to open them up and spray the ribbon with WD-40. It would thin the ink a bit and it would redistribute across the cloth and help fill in the depleted center section. I would do it a number of times and it still worked OK. If it got too light then I'd use inkpad ink to replenish it. The limiting factor was the ribbon itself would get worn-out from the pins hitting it and start wearing holes in it. Cheap aftermarket ribbons usually wore out much faster compared to the OEM ones. Still have my 801, just no continuous form paper to use.
Looks VERY similar to my old "Gorilla Banana" printer, which was basically the low end printer that proved to all your friends you couldn't afford an Epson. :-)
I had the same printer as a kid. UnfortunateIy I took it apart, when my c64 failed, because I could not connect it to my 286 PC and I was curious how it worked. I've printed out some homework from Easy Script. I've also tried Geowrite, but it was useless, because no hungarian characters were available, and it was extremly slow compared to an MS Word 6.0 ran on a 386 which I used in school... (I had a hungarian patched Easy Script). The MPS-801 had a disadvantage: only perforated paper could be used. Its printhead was extremely simple, one blade with a solenoid. The trick is the rotating wheel under the paper. The blade was synced with the wheel to produce the dots. I've refreshed it's ribbon with the same trick, with stamp pad ink...
Hi Jan You have an oscilloscope, Jan There is a nice device called the SCOPETREX there is also a controller that you can build yourself, you can. Is say a clone of the Vectrex only better. Here piece of text just look on youtube. your bench could also play games? [Tube Time] has fixed this problem, with Scopetrex, a vector graphic console for your oscilloscope
I had this disappointing printer with my C64. I really wanted a 1526 printer, but I couldn't afford it (as a teenager). (My brother had the far-superior Star Gemini 10x printer with the Cardco printer interface). So like you, it's nostalgic, but not a great printer... I couldn't use it to print out my course papers when I took my C64 to college because it lacked true descenders and my lit professor said he wouldn't accept any printouts without descenders, they were hard for him to read... DOH! But in a pinch, you could spray WD-40 into the printer ribbon to moisten up the ink and get more service life out of it!
Having grown up with printers much like that MPS-801, it fills me with awe to this day each time I see a laser or ink jet printer chuck out entire pages in just seconds.
This was my first printer that I used on my C116. My parents bought it for me at Allkauf (which are now Real). I used it for many years until the Amiga came along. I then replaced it with a 9-pin printer with a Centronics interface because I didn't know how to connect the round DIN plug to the Amiga. I don't think that was even possible.
Jan, I notice the command you use to access the print , isn't exactly correct the first number is a device number , according to the manual 4 is for the printer and 1 is datasette . From what i remember back in high school (1984/5) the command used was (open4,4:cmd4:List)
I seem to recall on my Okidata Microline 182 there was a modification for the ribbon cartridges where you would drill a hole to add ink into the ribbon compartment (might have been an actual kit). Yeah, I was cheap enough that I was refilling ink cartriges for a Microline 182. And I was surprised to see they still make a variant of that printer (186plus) that actually has USB. So that presumably means I could still get ribbons if I still had the printer (probably died 30 years ago).
Looking at prices of modern matrix printers, I can understand why you want resurrect such old mechanism. But how difficult for manufacturers was to make proper j, q and other y? After all, they made continuous image printing! Or maybe they were just lazy...
I enjoyed this one Jan. I have an MPS 801 new in the box out in my storage shed. I have to get it out of storage and start playing with it!... Thanks for the great video!.... :)
Ive worked for one of the biggest retail companies in the world and they still use dot matrix printers for printing reports (LG31 Digital printer, also some parts use LA75 printers)
Back in the day, we used a dribble of WD-40 on a dry ribbon. It would bleed and smear for a couple of test pages and have a slight color change. But we got a lot more use out of a ribbon. Epson, Roland, and Tandy ribbons.
Oh god, that horrible sound! I had an MPS-802 as a kid, which had the amazing ability to print in both directions! Plus it had the ultra-high resolution of 8x8 instead of 6x7 on the 801. I remember how loud the thing was, and printing out a school paper late at night and just leaving the room for it to finish. One thing you might think about is that the ink with oil may be degrading your print quality. This is a guess, but I do know that with ink-jet printers the time to dry is a factor in quality, since the ink will spread out into the paper by diffusion. Faster drying ink (as well as the paper quality itself) plays a factor here. So think about that before you fill your brand new ink cartridge with ink that may give you the same problem. I have a vague memory of the ink on my 802 being a dry type of ink, but I'm not really certain about that. I've thought a little bit about creating a translation layer between the IEC bus, and a modern laser printer connected to a network. I'm not sure how hard this would be, but it'd be cool to be able to print to a network printer from your commodore. It'd likely have to emulate a widely supported printer like the 801/802/803 to use it in any software, and you couldn't do those nifty banners, since even laser printers can't print on the full page. I'm not sure how these printers worked at a low level. Were they just PETSCII printers, and the computer controlled line-feed and characters, or could the computer upload a new character set to the printer, or were you limited to whatever font the printer had in it? If anyone knows I'd be curious to find out.
In the day I gave up with the Commodore printers as it seemed faster to write things out by hand than printing! I ended up getting a parallel port interface for my C128 and attaching a NEC P2200 24pin printer; obviously you didn't get the blocky graphics characters but it printed like a bat outta hell.
Such a nostalgic sound when that thing gets going! Sounds like the printer is clearing its throat 🤣 I remember my dad bringing back reams of holed paper like that from work to use on our Epson dot matrix. Your stuff looks quite yellow, is it vintage 80s paper?!
I used to 'replenish' dry ribbons with a good spraying of WD40; works on colour ones too. If you couldn't get it apart, clamping it and using a drill to power the ribbon advance did the trick.
One of the worst printers ever produced. The device itself was cranky as hell, had horrible output and the noise was something that imprinted into your brain. I can still hear this monstrosity more than thirty years later. I quickly obtained a centronics interface and an nice new Epson printer. The selling point was the reduction in noise. My grandfather bought it for me the same day I showed it to him. My final dot matrix printer was a Panasonic KXP-2123 colour. I currently have three of the things on the shelf.
I think the printer i have in my loft is that printer. So for me this was useful as I did not know printer ribbons are still available and I can do a test print. 👍
This must be a custom version of the Seikosha GP250X mechanism. That was my first printer. It's not actually even a "proper" dot matrix printer. The tell is the ribbon cable driving the print head. It only carries three signal lines. The head doesn't have a set of needles but just a vertical hammer. And the platen is not a rubber platen but has ribs across the print direction and it rotates fast. The print head hits each vertical line up to 7 times to produce up to 7 dots as it hits against the rotating ribs. Extremely noisy and extremely slow. But the fact that it actually works is amazing.
I bought one of these from a schoolfriend. I had it connected to an Amiga 500 via some kind of home-made parallel to serial interface that was advertised in the back pages of a computer magazine. I thought it looked familiar in the picture but as soon as I heard the noise...! Microphones cannot possibly capture the shear volume and mechanical pain of these things. I rejuvenated my ribbon with an aerosol carbon spay. I wouldn't recommend it because 30 years later I still can't hear much and my hands are black. 😃
I used to have a printer on my c64, also a Matrix Printer, I don't remember which brand. Remember, he could print back and forth in both directions, but when I went to print, you had to make sure that you could close the door because the noise was not heard! :))
I did this! I opened up the cartridge because I was actually attempting to replace the ribbon, but the ribbons I had were too long for this cartridge. I put a few drops of ink in and it was very dark and smeared for quite some time. Still pretty bad...got better after many many pages. Moral of the story...it only needs 1-2 drops
you could mod or softmod the rollers (should they be removable or spring-loaded) to have a rubber wheel instead, which could grip the paper and advance it which means you wouldnt need perforated paper, but thats kind of a matter of if you want to be able to use it with normal paper instead... and i have a feeling that the cartridges could be remanufactured in some way, even DIY...
Back in my day when I was in high school in the AV club ( IE in my school the Geek Squad ) we used to have a little jig you would put it on with little motor that would spin turn it. put ink on a little sponge that would rub against the ribbon and we set a timer and we would just let it run for 15 minutes. We also had a jig that would do the image writer ( IE APPLE Printers ) that had color ribbons which would be 3 colors and black all on one ribbon.
Ahh, memories. My first printer was an Olivetti which had just one ink jet. It went back and forth eight or nine times per line of text and the registration differed a little between the directions, so any vertical line became a concertina. Unfortunately the tiny paper steps also didn't always match, so some lines (and pages) got squashed vertically. It used a fairly high voltage pulse to move the ink to the paper, which looked like a line of tiny sparks as the head moved.
The metal tab on the side with the notches going in a half circle are to adjust the gap between the head and the paper. If your ink is a bit much you can depress the metal tab and move it to a further away notch to avoid the streaking :-)
The retrobrighting slow down may be do to depleting the peroxide. Washing the part and applying fresh peroxide would probably let you get the rest of the yellow out.
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"Near Letter Qualitiy" means the printer will produce something that nearly resembles letters.
On Epson, NLQ would print each line twice, in the same direction and with miniscule changes. It was much slower, but absolutely worth the time.
There's a lever inside on the left side (in front of the paper) that you can adjust to move the head and ribbon away from the paper. This may help reduce the smearing.
Yep. I believe it should also help to prevent the 40 years old head to break.
Ahh, the "pleasant" sound of a dot matrix printer. Memories.
I just measured it with an app on my smartphone: up to 95 dB without the cover, significantly better with the cover, but still a pain in the ass... aaah, the pleasant sound of ink jet and laser printers LOL
I remember we once had a field trip in school to some government place (in the 80ies). And they had a dot matrix printer, which could print a whole line in one go (the print head was as wide as the page). Boy, that thing was loud - but fast. At least back then it was considered blazing fast.
@Moseby Hill-Relevant Awesome. Didn't know that.
Jan, you need to retro-bright your paper ;)
German Umweltschutzpapier!
Also universal usable as toilet paper!
Compliments on your profile picture
@@MehYam2112 And yours. ;)
Jan, you can also adjust the printhead. There is a lever at the left site. 😊
Doesn’t work, try again. I have 10 of these in a chain I use to this day to print a news letter for me town in dunmarkish.
@@Grim-oc9fw It does. It stops the smearing of the ribbon against the paper. I just dusted off my printer in test mode and confirmed. All the way in and the ribbon rubs a line on the paper. A few notches back and it stops. Doesn't seem to do anything to the printed characters - it's just ribbon clearance.
If I remember right, I had an Epson connected to my good old Atari ST during my studies. I nicknamed it "Nadelfräse", in english "needle milling machine", because of the infernal noises it made. And nowadays we still use a dot matrix printer to print out the messages from our process control system in a waste water treatment facility.
Haha. Nadelfräse is a great word to describe it. My old Espon LX-800 did sound a bit like a Kreissäge.
I love how your fingers just got more and more smeared with ink over the course of the episode.
My Seikosha SL96 is still going strong. I was lucky enough to find a new old stock colour ribbon a few years back after the old one gave up after 24 years. I wish the ink on modern printer's would last that long 🖨️😉
For old ink have you tried the spray a bit of wd40 and move the reel then a bit more and then it should reagitate the ink
The ink replenishment made me laugh. I went through many shenanigans trying to refill that ink when i was 10, so that I could continue printing huge banners for no apparent reason.
those things were so freakin loud, you could hear them across the whole neigborhood
They used to make soundproof lab boxes to put them in.
One very nice thing about the old printers having their own ROM (and I guess a sort of processor), is that they don't require any drivers to work. The computer just outputs data to the printer, and it takes care of all the printing itself.
Nice video! Back in the day I owned a STAR LC-10 9 pin matrix printer. I loved it! Should I have a look at ebay!? 😉
Greeting, Doc64!
The effect after the re-inkt is normal, just print a few pages and it wil return to normal.
I had the MPS-803 for my C-64 - the 803 was a smaller footprint - great video as always Jan :)
I have an MPS-803 on the way.
I had an 802, actually I still do, including a few NOS ribbons. Just haven't used it in a while. I bought a job lot of C64 stuff in about 1995, after our neighbours dropped off a C64 with a 1541 on our door mat. "You like old stuff, don't you?". The 802 had the major advantage of a push tractor feed instead of a pull like the 801, which means you waste a page of paper for every print job. The MPS-1000 even had a push/pull feeder IIRC. Pull was good for intricate or stiff materials like labels.
Thank you Jan Beta!!! I'm looking forward to a video of the capacitor replacement in the future.
Cap replacement is probably unnecessary.
Replacement on tantal, haha.
@@westelaudio943 it is necessary in photo flash if you need to make polarity wrong. Never saw, but read that it make flash really flash!
I had the original seikosha printer, not the commodore branded one.
I had a Star LC10 for my Atari ST. It was also loud but not as high pitched as this one.
My C64 printer was a star nx-10 if I recall. I did run into one of these once though, the printer actually only had 1 tall “pin” - there’s a bar behind the ink+paper with sharp bumps on it that rotates crazy fast, and determines where that “unihammer” makes a dot vertically, making it very noisy too!
"there is nothing like the sound of a seikosha in the morning"
Used to fix/service so many dot matrix printers back in the day. For me at least, Okidata made the best ones, especially by the 90s.
tape about 6 sheets in a loop, and let it run a while. lol
Great stuff...
Acquired one of these printers in a bundle of Commodore stuff over a year ago. Came to me in original box with original receipt and warranty card.
After watching your video I feel tempted to give it a bit of a clean and see if I can get it to print something...
Regarding pronunciation of Japanese words (Seikosha) written in latin letters (Romaji):
- single mostly vowels like you do in German, just the U usually sounds more like a short Ü
- consonants are pronounced as they are in English
- combined vowels are mostly spoken semi seperately (sE-I-kO-shA) as Japanese is a syllable based language
So, when you first said Seikosha, it was almost pretty bang on just by instinct.
Trust your instincts! If you're off, I'm pretty sure you'll get a "Someone's wrong on the interwebs!" soon enough 😉
a branch of the Japanese company Seiko
Thanks for the walk down memory lane.
You could get a rom upgrade back in the day to print the tails, might look on archive.org for that or see if Adrian Black has a printer he could make a rom image for you.
Also, there is a silver lever on the inside left of the printer to adjust the print head gap to the paper, when putting in a new ribbon, you often had to back off the gap to allow for the fuzzy goodness of a fresh ribbon.
Great vid, thanks again!
That was the sequel to my Vic 1525.... the 1525 / Gorilla Banana / Tandy DMP100 were all the same Seikosha, iirc. The MPS-801 was probably my favorite printer.
My first printer was the Seikosha GP100VC, which is the same as the VC1525. Later i replaced it with a Star NL-10, which was able to print NLQ
Also sold as the Tandy Line Printer VII.
Just picked up one of those for $5 at an estate sale.
Our preferred printer back then for the C64 was the Epson FX-80 with a Cardco parallel printer adapter.
I still have the adapter but alas the printer long ago met the trash bin when inkjets came out.
Nice job. The MPS-801 has gradually become my favourite-looking of all the Commodore printers. Something about the chunky design.
Yes, I like the design, too! It says 80s in so many ways but it's still rather elegant. :)
Ahh yes...I had a MPS803 printer bundled with a 1541 disk drive sold together for £200ish back in 1986........
Your love for those devices makes the devices love you ;)
I hope so! :D
All I ever did was pop the top off and ad 2 or 3 drops of ink then put it together and turn the ribbon until it's gone around 2 or 3 times.
Wow! That sound takes me back! I've got a Commodore MPS1250 printer with a combined Centronics and Commodore interface plug in module. I could use it with my Commodore 64 AND my Amiga 500! :-)
Oh man, I still remember when we got our C64 printer... I went out and bought The Print Shop just to be able to print cool things. Today people wouldn't understand the struggle of waiting 5 min to print something ..lol
Ah the joys of dot matrix. I remember printer hoods used to reduce (somewhat) that noise. They still use dot matrix where they need carbon copies (on multi-part paper). I guess legally it is a carbon copy rather than alleged 2nd print of page... That's probably why you still have DMs and their supplies. Thanks for taking me back down memory lane :-)
I remember having my Commodore DM printer. This is probably the exact model but I am not sure of that. Cool! I am talking about 1985, when I was online with it too, using Q-Link and 300 baud modem. Q-Link turned into AOL in the future from there.
Also my first printer, bought to use with my Commodore 64. I recall that third party companies were advertising replacement ROMs that would give true descenders (I don't recall if they also did bi-directional printing). My second printer was an Epson LX-86, used with my Amiga, a fair step up in quality.
It's nice to see a Commodore PRINTER taking front & centre -- either you're nostalgic about the sound of a dot matrix head, or you never want to hear it again! I was laughing during your re-inking effort with the sponges, because it reminded me of a seemingly ridiculous hack that we used in a zero-budget computer lab running dot matrix printers in the 1990s (and when I say zero budget, I mean none for cartridges OR ink). We would grab the nearest black ball-point pen, remove the ink cartridge and cut the ball point off, effectively making a straw filled with ink. You would put the top end between your lips and slowly blow all the ink out onto the ribbon while turning the knob to run it through its loop. No mess, and surprisingly effective. I can't attest to pen ink being good for the print head in the long run -- but I don't recall our printers ever breaking down, either.
I already used stamp ink in the '80s, in order to save my little money (being a teenager, I always ran out of money those days LOL)!
I use to directly add ink on the ribbon, without to use any sponge, leaving the ribbon pretty wet. You can also use ink with a different color, like blue and maybe red. Today I'm using blue ink, since it was what I had at home.
Dot matrix printers are definitely still in use. I've seen brand new Okidata Microline printers...and they're not cheap! I can imagine a dot matrix printer being useful for a lot of quick prints where cheaper cost is more important, like auto repair shops, doctor's offices, etc. Inkjet cartridges are expensive and add up very quickly. Dot matrix printers might be an option in that case if super high quality prints aren't needed.
Just bought one this week. Ordered new old stock ink and paper 240x280mm. Hopefully, everything goes well 🙏
The printing sawmill! Screeech#*§ß&!!!! I think the colour scheme is actually kind of based on the VIC-20🙂
Geil! Genau das war auch mein erster Drucker! Hab ic am C64 betrieben..ein Höllengerät! Hat übelst Krach gemacht!
Pöh. Der klingt ja harmlos. Mein erster Drucker war ein DDR-Import der Marke PRÄSIDENT vom VEB Robotron. Das Teil war gebaut wie ein Panzer und besaß, dem Klang nach zu urteilen, ein zum Druckkopf umfunktioniertes Flakgeschütz aus NVA-Beständen.
@@Shifter-1040ST Da gibts ein paar Spezialitäten... ich besitze einen Flachbettscanner, bei dem ich schwöre, dass die Ingenieure es irgendwie geschafft haben, das Prinzip des Nadeldruckers umzukehren und Bilder mechanisch abzutasten! :-D Macht einen Höllenkrawall, und der Radau ändert sich, je nachdem, ob der Schlitten nur leer bewegt wird oder abgetastet.
This puts me waaay back. We had a MPS-801 in school back in the days.
My first printer experience. Later I owned a MPS-1200.
The sound of those printers is unmatched.
* swrrreeeet*swrrreeeet*swrrreeeet*swwwt*swwwt*swwwt*krrrllt *
( * print*print*print*feed*feed*feed*jam * 😆 )
Basic and loud model GP500(A) by Seikosha, my first printer for the Commodore plus/4. The Original had a different connector that needed an interface (Wiesemann) for use with Commodore.
Making me nostalgic for the Epson FX 50...
The graphics print needs a few passes per line because the printer's buffer is so small. This effect is most noticeable when you print out a program listing (OPEN1,4:CMD1:LIST) because the computer basically locks up until the print is nearly complete - only then do you get READY and your cursor back.
Upgrading to an MPS-1200 blew my mind. Faster, quieter, and prints in both directions! Plus the buffer was larger, so I got my cursor back sooner. But watching this video makes me want to lug the MPS-801 out of the closet and give it a go for awhile.
PAH. MPS 801 was for the nerds without style!!! Nerds with style had a MS 802!!! HA³ And nerds with real style modded their MPS 802 to print GFX³ GALORE. And expert engineers modded the printer... switch it on... without effect and conclude they broke it... only to find out plugging a power chord is somehow mandatory.
If the capacitors are working, why change them? I feel it's only worth changing capacitors if they test bad or are causing problems.
Ah, 9 pin print-head, unidirectional and very noisy, I used to print my homework out on an MPS -1000 hooked up to my C64 running Easy Script, when I upgraded to an Amiga I kept the printer because it also had a standard centronics interface, it lasted quite a while until i managed to get a HP Laserjet 4.
I had the Comrex/Citizen CR-220, which I think was the OEM for this thing. I didn't like this printer, even for the time it was very rudimentary and unreliable. The electronics failed often. I was lucky enough to find a Commodore 1526 soon after.
Looks like from the manual that the printer has 90 Bytes of [printer] buffer memory. So even less memory than the MOS/CSG RIOT chip famously used in the Atari 2600 VCS. I wonder if anyone created a buffer RAM upgrade for this printer [or the other Seikosha versions of this printer]...
I downloaded a couple fonts (from, I think, dafont.com) and modified them just a little so they didn't have descenders and would look more like my old 1525/mps801.
I wasn't satisfied.. so I bought a Gorilla Banana... need to get paper before I can test it, though...
I had a Seikosha SP-1000-VC. Not bottom-end, like this 801; but not high end like the best Epsons; but a damn fine reliable workhorse which never failed
that dreadful sound ... I hoped never to hear again ... had a Seikosha (Seiko) B/W Printer back then hooked to my trusty C128 ... my rich friend had a Star 24 pin dot matrix color printer ... he could print in color (!) ... of course from his Amiga
Why not adjusting the print head distance? Or did i miss the part of the video where you explained that lever? It guess it would have helped a lot putting it lower on the dry ribbon and lifting it from the paper after the refill to reduce smearing.
Best of the commodore Printers from that generation. I got stuck with the MPs802 which was a Piece of xxxx. The 803 was pretty good as well.
Just learned the english word for >>unterlängen
My 1st n fave commodore 8bit printer. Had another a while after I got back into commodore bot not atm :-(
Over here in north america the ribbons are used in a timestamp / punchcard system (I think) so they're still available but much more expensive than the old days. Funny thing I remember seeing classivied ads in magazines back in the 80's that had a replacement rom for these (probly a character rom) that allowed true descenders. Haven't been able to locate them in the past few years though.
This was my first printer too! The trick on these ink cartridges was to open them up and spray the ribbon with WD-40. It would thin the ink a bit and it would redistribute across the cloth and help fill in the depleted center section. I would do it a number of times and it still worked OK. If it got too light then I'd use inkpad ink to replenish it. The limiting factor was the ribbon itself would get worn-out from the pins hitting it and start wearing holes in it. Cheap aftermarket ribbons usually wore out much faster compared to the OEM ones. Still have my 801, just no continuous form paper to use.
Looks VERY similar to my old "Gorilla Banana" printer, which was basically the low end printer that proved to all your friends you couldn't afford an Epson. :-)
I had this from the OEM - Seikosha. The one-hammer printer as opposed to 7,8,9,24 pins.
I had the same printer as a kid. UnfortunateIy I took it apart, when my c64 failed, because I could not connect it to my 286 PC and I was curious how it worked. I've printed out some homework from Easy Script. I've also tried Geowrite, but it was useless, because no hungarian characters were available, and it was extremly slow compared to an MS Word 6.0 ran on a 386 which I used in school... (I had a hungarian patched Easy Script).
The MPS-801 had a disadvantage: only perforated paper could be used. Its printhead was extremely simple, one blade with a solenoid. The trick is the rotating wheel under the paper. The blade was synced with the wheel to produce the dots. I've refreshed it's ribbon with the same trick, with stamp pad ink...
Hi Jan
You have an oscilloscope, Jan
There is a nice device called the SCOPETREX there is also a controller that you can build yourself, you can.
Is say a clone of the Vectrex only better.
Here piece of text just look on youtube.
your bench could also play games? [Tube Time] has fixed this problem, with Scopetrex, a vector graphic console for your oscilloscope
I had this disappointing printer with my C64. I really wanted a 1526 printer, but I couldn't afford it (as a teenager). (My brother had the far-superior Star Gemini 10x printer with the Cardco printer interface). So like you, it's nostalgic, but not a great printer... I couldn't use it to print out my course papers when I took my C64 to college because it lacked true descenders and my lit professor said he wouldn't accept any printouts without descenders, they were hard for him to read... DOH! But in a pinch, you could spray WD-40 into the printer ribbon to moisten up the ink and get more service life out of it!
Having grown up with printers much like that MPS-801, it fills me with awe to this day each time I see a laser or ink jet printer chuck out entire pages in just seconds.
I had a Mannesmann Tally printer, I think it was MPS-801 compatible!
This was my first printer that I used on my C116. My parents bought it for me at Allkauf (which are now Real). I used it for many years until the Amiga came along. I then replaced it with a 9-pin printer with a Centronics interface because I didn't know how to connect the round DIN plug to the Amiga. I don't think that was even possible.
Nice. I have an MPS-803 on the way. Anyone knows where to get compatible ribbons in the EU?
Jan, I notice the command you use to access the print , isn't exactly correct the first number is a device number , according to the manual 4 is for the printer and 1 is datasette . From what i remember back in high school (1984/5) the command used was (open4,4:cmd4:List)
I seem to recall on my Okidata Microline 182 there was a modification for the ribbon cartridges where you would drill a hole to add ink into the ribbon compartment (might have been an actual kit). Yeah, I was cheap enough that I was refilling ink cartriges for a Microline 182. And I was surprised to see they still make a variant of that printer (186plus) that actually has USB. So that presumably means I could still get ribbons if I still had the printer (probably died 30 years ago).
Looking at prices of modern matrix printers, I can understand why you want resurrect such old mechanism.
But how difficult for manufacturers was to make proper j, q and other y? After all, they made continuous image printing! Or maybe they were just lazy...
I enjoyed this one Jan. I have an MPS 801 new in the box out in my storage shed. I have to get it out of storage and start playing with it!... Thanks for the great video!.... :)
Ive worked for one of the biggest retail companies in the world and they still use dot matrix printers for printing reports (LG31 Digital printer, also some parts use LA75 printers)
Back in the day, we used a dribble of WD-40 on a dry ribbon. It would bleed and smear for a couple of test pages and have a slight color change. But we got a lot more use out of a ribbon. Epson, Roland, and Tandy ribbons.
Now if I could just find an MPs-801 ribbon in the USA. Does anyone know of an equivalent that is still being sold ?
Oh god, that horrible sound! I had an MPS-802 as a kid, which had the amazing ability to print in both directions! Plus it had the ultra-high resolution of 8x8 instead of 6x7 on the 801. I remember how loud the thing was, and printing out a school paper late at night and just leaving the room for it to finish.
One thing you might think about is that the ink with oil may be degrading your print quality. This is a guess, but I do know that with ink-jet printers the time to dry is a factor in quality, since the ink will spread out into the paper by diffusion. Faster drying ink (as well as the paper quality itself) plays a factor here. So think about that before you fill your brand new ink cartridge with ink that may give you the same problem. I have a vague memory of the ink on my 802 being a dry type of ink, but I'm not really certain about that.
I've thought a little bit about creating a translation layer between the IEC bus, and a modern laser printer connected to a network. I'm not sure how hard this would be, but it'd be cool to be able to print to a network printer from your commodore. It'd likely have to emulate a widely supported printer like the 801/802/803 to use it in any software, and you couldn't do those nifty banners, since even laser printers can't print on the full page.
I'm not sure how these printers worked at a low level. Were they just PETSCII printers, and the computer controlled line-feed and characters, or could the computer upload a new character set to the printer, or were you limited to whatever font the printer had in it? If anyone knows I'd be curious to find out.
In the day I gave up with the Commodore printers as it seemed faster to write things out by hand than printing!
I ended up getting a parallel port interface for my C128 and attaching a NEC P2200 24pin printer; obviously you didn't get the blocky graphics characters but it printed like a bat outta hell.
Such a nostalgic sound when that thing gets going! Sounds like the printer is clearing its throat 🤣
I remember my dad bringing back reams of holed paper like that from work to use on our Epson dot matrix. Your stuff looks quite yellow, is it vintage 80s paper?!
I used to 'replenish' dry ribbons with a good spraying of WD40; works on colour ones too. If you couldn't get it apart, clamping it and using a drill to power the ribbon advance did the trick.
retrobriting the case, but no attention to the print head? degreasing and relubrication would have helped a lot to give it another 35+ years.
Oh .. man !!.. at 7:56.. no numbers ....... I guess we had a "lost time accident" then ..... LOL :-D
One of the worst printers ever produced. The device itself was cranky as hell, had horrible output and the noise was something that imprinted into your brain. I can still hear this monstrosity more than thirty years later.
I quickly obtained a centronics interface and an nice new Epson printer. The selling point was the reduction in noise. My grandfather bought it for me the same day I showed it to him.
My final dot matrix printer was a Panasonic KXP-2123 colour. I currently have three of the things on the shelf.
I think the printer i have in my loft is that printer.
So for me this was useful as I did not know printer ribbons are still available and I can do a test print. 👍
This must be a custom version of the Seikosha GP250X mechanism. That was my first printer. It's not actually even a "proper" dot matrix printer. The tell is the ribbon cable driving the print head. It only carries three signal lines. The head doesn't have a set of needles but just a vertical hammer. And the platen is not a rubber platen but has ribs across the print direction and it rotates fast. The print head hits each vertical line up to 7 times to produce up to 7 dots as it hits against the rotating ribs. Extremely noisy and extremely slow. But the fact that it actually works is amazing.
I bought one of these from a schoolfriend. I had it connected to an Amiga 500 via some kind of home-made parallel to serial interface that was advertised in the back pages of a computer magazine.
I thought it looked familiar in the picture but as soon as I heard the noise...!
Microphones cannot possibly capture the shear volume and mechanical pain of these things.
I rejuvenated my ribbon with an aerosol carbon spay. I wouldn't recommend it because 30 years later I still can't hear much and my hands are black. 😃
I used to have a printer on my c64, also a Matrix Printer, I don't remember which brand.
Remember, he could print back and forth in both directions, but when I went to print, you had to make sure that you could close the door because the noise was not heard! :))
I did this! I opened up the cartridge because I was actually attempting to replace the ribbon, but the ribbons I had were too long for this cartridge. I put a few drops of ink in and it was very dark and smeared for quite some time. Still pretty bad...got better after many many pages. Moral of the story...it only needs 1-2 drops
you could mod or softmod the rollers (should they be removable or spring-loaded) to have a rubber wheel instead, which could grip the paper and advance it which means you wouldnt need perforated paper, but thats kind of a matter of if you want to be able to use it with normal paper instead... and i have a feeling that the cartridges could be remanufactured in some way, even DIY...
Back in my day when I was in high school in the AV club ( IE in my school the Geek Squad ) we used to have a little jig you would put it on with little motor that would spin turn it. put ink on a little sponge that would rub against the ribbon and we set a timer and we would just let it run for 15 minutes. We also had a jig that would do the image writer ( IE APPLE Printers ) that had color ribbons which would be 3 colors and black all on one ribbon.
Just bought a boxed one and it powers up. Thanks for the video as it will help me refurbish/keep it going
Ahh, memories. My first printer was an Olivetti which had just one ink jet. It went back and forth eight or nine times per line of text and the registration differed a little between the directions, so any vertical line became a concertina. Unfortunately the tiny paper steps also didn't always match, so some lines (and pages) got squashed vertically. It used a fairly high voltage pulse to move the ink to the paper, which looked like a line of tiny sparks as the head moved.
I from Poland and I always looked for European equivalent of Windex. And i finally found it :)
So it will be a good idea to change caps "... in the long term". It's been 40 years, when will it be the time then?
I used to have one of these and I hated it because my friends with PC's had far better printers. Now I'm obsessed with finding one. Such is life!
I use an okidata USB dot matrix printer. It's great for printing text occasionally
Wouldn't it be possible to make printers that work with modern PCs as well as Commodore computers?
Probably readouts for ballistic chronographs.
The metal tab on the side with the notches going in a half circle are to adjust the gap between the head and the paper. If your ink is a bit much you can depress the metal tab and move it to a further away notch to avoid the streaking :-)
The retrobrighting slow down may be do to depleting the peroxide. Washing the part and applying fresh peroxide would probably let you get the rest of the yellow out.
I still have my Mac Inker device. It will run the ribbon around a capstan with an ink reservoir. Worked really well.