dpg@busch.UUCP (David Grossman) (08/23/84)
[] I've had a Transtar 120 with my Corona PC for about 6 months. For straight printing of text, I think it's great. It has also been very reliable. I had an occaision to print a hundred pages at one sitting and there have been no bad side effects. There are 4 buttons on the front: on/off line, autoload, line feed, and eject. Autoload feeds the paper so it is ready to print. This is dip switch selectable to the first line, 1.5, or 2 inches down. Ribbons and print wheels are very easy to change. For good quality print, I heartily recommend a carbon film ribbon. However, since these are not reusable you should have a cloth ribbon on hand for drafts. The printer automatically stops when a carbon ribbon ends. Then you just open the lid, the print head moves to the center, you change ribbons, close the lid, press on line, and it doesn't miss a beat. The printer is supposed to be bidirectional, but you need to send it a code at the end of each forward printing line to make it print reverse (and likewise at the end of each reverse printing line). There is no way for me to do this under Multimate, the word processor I use. Sub and superscripts work, but you really need a different type size for these to look good. Underlining is continuous instead of broken. There is no built in facility for boldface (e.g. with slightly offset double typing). For a low end letter quality printer, I haven't seen a better buy. David Grossman ..!ihnp4!we53!busch!dpg Anheuser-Busch Companies 314/577-3125 One Busch Place, Bldg. 202-4 St. Louis, MO 63118