rwh@aesat.UUCP (Russell Herman) (12/06/84)
Well, after seeing a couple of negative responses about the MPS801,
and no positive ones, I decided not to go that route. Another reason
was that when I someday upgrade to a *real* computer, I don't want to
have to buy yet another printer. So I bought a package consisting of
an ADMATE DP-100 printer (I don't know anything about it other than what's
in its Japlish user's manual - that it's EPSON compatible with the IBM-PC
graphics, has about 20 other character sets as well [10 of which include
katakana!], and can be downloaded with characters as well; true descenders;
square-wire dot matrix; pretty decent looking output, all in all) and a
M/W 350 interface.
First, the good news. Yes, the M/W does provide EXACT compatibility.
Commodore graphics print fine, both upper and lower case sets. I didn't bother
trying dot tab stuff, but printer commands and secondary addresses work as
per 1525. Even Music Construction Set output came out perfectly.
A useful capability of the interface is that by opening
secondary address 5, you can talk to your printer over a logical wire,
so you can fire off whatever control codes you like. You can also ESC ESC,
if you're crazy enough to want to work backwards thru PETASCII for your
control sequences.
In addition, the interface is programmable with regard to
device #
forms length
left margin
right margin
auto linefeed on/off
monitor mode (prints ASCII numeric for each character received)
secondary address lock (don't understand what this is for)
Extra secondary addresses 1 and 8 (corresponding to 0 and 7) provide a
program listing mode in which shift and Commodore characters are
printed as [s x] and [c x] respectively, where x is the unshifted character.
The interface supports EPSON, Prowriter, Okidata, and Seikosha style
printers.
Now the bad news. In dot mode, it's sloooow. You wouldn't believe how
slow it is. I think it would take somewhere between 1/2 - 1 hour to
print out each 2-1/2 measure chunk of Music Construction set. However,
both the printer and the interface are socketed for 4K RAM expansion
options. I'm going to get some chips, plug them in, and see what happens.
A lesser complaint is the powering of the interface. M/W built to
the "5V on pin 18" standard. EPSON uses 5V on pin 30-something. So M/W
sell (for $10 - see if you can get your local vendor to throw one in)
a power cable that plugs into the casette port for powering the interface.
This casette port plug juts out contacts for piggybacking. BEWARE SHORTS.
The first thing I did was tape over the exposed contacts. Why they couldn't
make available a 36 pin adaptor crossing 18 and 3x (now that I'd pay $10
for) I don't know. Tacky tacky.
The verdict - for basically WP use, a workable system, with far nicer output
than Commodore's own printer. For bit-map graphics, forget it (but wait
till I try it with some RAM buffers). I must add that I don't know who to
blame for the for the performance problem in this mode, the interface or
the printer.
--
______ Russ Herman
/ \ {allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!aesat!rwh
@( ? ? )@
( || ) The opinions above are strictly personal, and
( \__/ ) do not reflect those of my employer (or even
\____/ possibly myself an hour from now.)