Plain SPool Printers

No. They were replaced by ribbon cartridges in the mid 1980's. You can still get dot matrix printers that use ribbon cartridges.

Yep. Slow, noisy, ugly, heavy, prints badly, rips ribbons, and has ocassional mechanical problems (usually from internal crud buildup). The parallel port would not hand EPP or ECP. I vaguely recall that the serial port would only do hardware flow control and not xon/xoff, but am not sure. I used to service those dinosaurs.

Really? The 82A would frequently jam when it came time to change ribbon direction. The usual result was that the ribbon was torn at one end. It was easy to fix, but irritating. Getting it to print dark black was a problem, because the ribbon would wear so quickly. Great for its day, but not useful today. Get a laser printer.

Dunno. Toner dust is allegedly toxic and flammable. I wouldn't want to breath, eat, or smoke the stuff, but it's not going to kill you.

I have about a dozen Okidata 320 and 320 turbo printers in service at various customers. They do have their problems, but seems to hold together well enough. If you're going to want dot matrix, one of these might be suitable. There are plenty for sale on eBay.

$95 plus $28.50 shipping or best offer.

--
# Jeff Liebermann 150 Felker St #D Santa Cruz CA 95060
# 831-336-2558
# http://802.11junk.com               jeffl@cruzio.com
# http://www.LearnByDestroying.com               AE6KS

At an Office Depot near me, they have an entire aisle of printer ribbons for panasonic, Okidata, etc dot matrix and other impact printers. Every time I see them I laugh. It makes me wonder who would still buy those. The store is in a highly commercial area, and there are a lot of businesses around (including several clinics and a hospital). I bet the medical industry might have equipment that still uses ribbons.

Within a couple miles of that store is one that specifically does typewriter repair and maintenance. I'm sure they also stock the ribbons.

Thanks.

Remove the BALONEY from my email address.

----------------------------------------------------- Matthew Fries Minneapolis, MN USA snipped-for-privacy@baloneyvisi.com

"Quit eating all my *STUFF*!" - The Tick

Although I have not used them in 10 years, I keep two Apple ImageWriter II printers around. They are about the only thing that will reliably feed continous form catalog cards.

My wife is a teaching librarian (K-12), and still uses the cards. I keep the printers around in case she asks for them to do one last run of cards from their computerised catalog before going 100% to computers.

While many libraries have computerized catalogs, I'm sure there are small ones that still maintain cards.

Not much use for them here for medical printers, the last time I was in a hospital, the clerk on the way out scanned all of the papers and printed out copies for me to take to my doctor and insurance company. I expect that they were shreded in a few days.

Geoff.

--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson N3OWJ/4X1GM
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to misquote it.

Anyone who needs multiple copies of forms. My credit union still has several dot matrix printers for printing transactions.

--
For the last time:  I am not a mad scientist, I'm just a very ticked off
scientist!!!

I used an Oki 92A for about 7 years; I bought one of them when they were new on the market, and a model 192 a couple years later. Never a moment's trouble from either. The only issue was having to vacuum paper dust out of them occasionally. Yeah, the ribbons weren't as durable as I would have hoped, but the printera were a workhorses.

The dot matrix printers were life savers for customers that needed to print multi-part forms. The Mannesman-Tally DMP printers were in heavy use in military installations where muli-part forms were a standard in almost every area. They were much more sturdy and were built for heavy, constant use.

-- David dgm> >

have you ever worked with Florida Data printers, by chance?

Nope. I never even heard of Florida Data (and have only visited Florida once). Google found a type BNY dot matrix printer, but I know nothing.

--
# Jeff Liebermann 150 Felker St #D Santa Cruz CA 95060
# 831-336-2558
# http://802.11junk.com               jeffl@cruzio.com
# http://www.LearnByDestroying.com               AE6KS

My oki82a ran like a tank. Never had the ribbon jams you describe. I even used film ribbons for slightly better print. I gotta admit, at the time i had it, a lot of other folks had the same printer, so I had an informal support network.

I finally did get a panasonic dot matrix to replace it, and i even bought a ribbon reinker. And I reink my inkjet by syringe (cartridge costs $25, ink costs $1). But in the end, I just go to Staples or Kinkos and haven't used any of my own printers in two years. THanks in large part to the ability to generate and mail PDF files.

- = - Vasos Panagiotopoulos, Columbia'81+, Reagan, Mozart, Pindus, BioStrategist

---{Nothing herein constitutes advice. Everything fully disclaimed.}--- [Homeland Security means private firearms not lazy obstructive guards] [Urb sprawl confounds terror] [Phooey on GUI: Windows for subprime Bimbos]

I've bene in ICUs where the EKG is stored online. When my dad wa sin the ICU in 7/99 they were able to go back several days on the computer without paper.

- = - Vasos Panagiotopoulos, Columbia'81+, Reagan, Mozart, Pindus, BioStrategist

---{Nothing herein constitutes advice. Everything fully disclaimed.}--- [Homeland Security means private firearms not lazy obstructive guards] [Urb sprawl confounds terror] [Phooey on GUI: Windows for subprime Bimbos]

BTW, I was just looking for a 1965 ad for my house and came across $39.95 manual typerwriters and $3.95 leather brief bags (the kind lawyers now pay $500 for)

- = - Vasos Panagiotopoulos, Columbia'81+, Reagan, Mozart, Pindus, BioStrategist

---{Nothing herein constitutes advice. Everything fully disclaimed.}--- [Homeland Security means private firearms not lazy obstructive guards] [Urb sprawl confounds terror] [Phooey on GUI: Windows for subprime Bimbos]

Back in the early 90s I worked for a fire brigade that had them as turnout printers (so they printed out where to send a fire engine to). They were pretty reliable, but we had to change PSU capacitors in lots of them as they were on 24x7.

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In about 95/96 I looked into the feasability of using dot matrixes for volume printing, on the basis that they were so cheap to run. At the time ribbons were being cleared out en masse, sometimes for 10p, sometimes free, ink can be bought by the pint, and people were giving the printers away.

The main issues IIRC were the noise of a stack of such machines (one was far too slow), plus the fact that used continuously they overheated a lot. Then there was the need for a lot of ongoing reinking. Some of them could produce quite good quality print, thanks to overlapping dots or 24 pin mechanisms, and some were terrible.

NT