 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Love thy dot-matrix printer Ian McDowell |
This is simple stuff, but desirable. Cover everything up. Throw a dust cover over your computer and printer at the end of each session. If they sit in an office, like mine, with a dusty carpet and plenty of traffic it pays to keep some of the fluff, hairs, dust and ants out of the works.
Use the printer's full potential. It will have Epson or IBM Proprinter emulation, each with its own set of initialisation sequences of which some will be in common and some not - very confusing. Get a driver program for choosing fonts for printing simple text files, preferably one that tells you what you are doing onscreen. BMC.EXE and P1123.EXE on the BBS are examples, the former for Epson and latter for Proprinter. Configure your word processor and Windows to achieve all its capabilities, including the use of bit-mapped fonts.
Set the separation of the ribbon and the paper correctly. The printer will print faint if they are too far apart. The ribbon will wear rapidly if they are too close. While printing something with a new ribbon, use the adjustment to get dark print, but only just. Do this every time you insert a paper of different weight. This is expressed in grams per square metre, usually about sixty. Insufficient separation drags the ribbon, which becomes furry. This in turn places grey lines across the paper. Adjustment is difficult once the ribbon becomes rough. Rubbish from a worn ribbon may clog up the pins.
Don't try to re-ink ribbons. It's not worth the mess and wasted time. Find the cheapest and buy some more. The range of prices for a given ribbon is surprising. In ribbon sales, as with cables, Kelly rides yet.
If you run more than one printer off one computer, use a mechanical switch. It is economical of ports and much less hassle than software.
Use the line and form feed controls to adjust the position of the paper. If you must turn the paper back manually turn the printer off first. You risk damage if you force things while the printer is turned on, particularly if the paper jams and folds under the platen.
All that should keep you going until you move into inkjet, laser, and colour fields. Low-priced, low maintenance, simply configured, wholly non-mechanical printers must inevitably come.
Reprinted from the June 1995 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
