The horizontally compressed letters are most likely bad lubricant in the stepper motor that moves the carriage. This is fixable as well(but not the point of this video) and would be very similar to the fix I did on a floppy drive's stepper motor a while back: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-q6uTAWpqaEY.html
This reminds me of my childhood. In 1996, my mom started working as an accountant, and sometimes she had to work from home, especially when I was sick, and there was nobody to take care of me. She would bring a 386SX laptop home and an Epson LX-100 dot matrix printer. I could tell from the rhythm of printer if she was printing invoices, or the reports from the bank, etc.
Oh my god, you just brought back some memories. Back in the day, here in Serbia, you knew if you went to someone's house and they had an LX-300 that their mom was either a bookkeeper or an accountant. Mine was (and still is), and yeah, I could tell more or less what she was printing, and always hoped that it would be a short document! Nowadays we still use dot matrix printers here for batch printing payment slips in schools, banks, post offices and such. Though post offices have the kind where the printer sucks in the form and then returns it to you, printed.
Later the LX-100 was upgraded to an LX-300, but that always stayed at her office :) The situation is very similar here in Slovakia, you’ve got dot matrix printers at many places. Not so long ago small dot matrix printers were common at shops for printing the recipe, but now almost all of them were replaced by thermal printers. I’m guessing they are cheaper to run and require less maintenance.
Wonderful video! I've never thought how a dot matrix printer works - it would be interesting to make a video about how they work. I loved the shorter video as well - I've been a little discouraged to start some of the recent videos because of the length.
A trip into my past - I've lost count of how many dot matrix heads I've repaired over the years, a lot of the time you have to remove a shim to bring the pins forward as they wear in a pattern that matches the curve of the platen, a good soak in solvent to clear out the old dried ink, de-shim, a light grind and a dress with a small diamond file to deburr the pins and in most cases its as good as new once the head gap is set. Horizontal spacing issues were mostly dirt in the encoder, a strip and clean and it's sorted. Modern kit isn't built to be serviced like this - good to see a video like this, it keeps the technology alive !
"when maintenance and serviceability was a key feature people were looking for...the Apple image writer..." as you can see, in the 21st century, those phrases are oxymorons.
@@user-vn7ce5ig1z They realised that they can make more money through a repair service that also encourages the customer to buy new products instead of repairing the old ones.
@@S41t4r4 They lose about 600.000.000 on iPhone battery repairs alone. Regardless of what the reason is, it's probably not malice. Apply Hanlon's Razor first (and ignore the lawyer departments as they have their own motivations in any company).
@@johnkeates9434 That what apples says to defend themselve. The Question is how much do they earn with the whole repair program that is definitely a money pot for them, not how much they lose on one part that they basically only do, because they had a scandal about throttling older phones.
It wasn’t so much a scandal as ignorant masses who don’t understand lithium battery aging throwing a fit over something they aren’t qualified to talk about. I really don’t get the Apple hate. Consumer electronics are pretty much ALL disposable now. Liability, clueless users, the quest for smaller / lighter stuff, security concerns, intellectual property guarantees, profit.. whatever drives it, it isn’t strictly an Apple thing. I would love to go back to when you got schematics with everything, but those days are gone. Exception being tools for professionals - e.g., the Mac Pro. Apple screwed up with the trash can, trying to put design and unobtrusiveness over expandability, and that did not pan out in their favor. And thus, the new cheese grater.
Even though the rest of the hardware was more recent, the wholesaler my mom works at still used dot matrix for their registers for a long time. Her particular location only recently switched to laser as preparation for the new software, but for now this new hardware is still coupled to IBM AS/400. At her new location which was only finished building this year they still have dot matrix printers for some processes. It's cool to see how common these types of printers apparently still are in work environments.
Nice and simple fix, I'll try it with my Star printer. I think it'd be really interesting to see a complete refurbishment/repair of the printhead and its mechanism, and how/what to lubricate in order to prolong its life. Also, definitely needs retrobrighting, I mean it was painful seeing how yellowed the plastics are.
Still had dot matrix at university in the mid to late 90s. They're still used in a lot of tills as well for some reason. At first I always visualised in my head that the print head would be a block of pins and would form a character and then hit the paper like a typewriter. I guess seeing daisywheel printers puts that picture into your head. My first printer was an MPS-801 in 1985/1986 when tractor feed paper wasn't optional. I ended up using one on the Amiga later on using some special cable.
Man, this reminds me of the Citizen GSX-140 color dot matrix printer we had in 1991. We bought the Philips Vendex Headstart LX-CD IBM compatible in 1990 and played around with it over winter, but we didn't get a printer until after we got a desk to get it off the dining room table. As far as I can remember, we burned out the print head after a few years of printing color banners, and being unfamiliar with removing the print head.
In France too those dot matrix printers are sometimes still used, a local pharmacy in my town used OKI dot matrix printers up until 2018 or so, those things were ungodly slow but hell they were built like tanks!
Anywhere that still prints carbon-copy invoices, really. Most retailers will have switched to laser printers, but some still use old-school carbon-copy stationary.
Every restaurant I've worked in uses them for printing out the order tickets for the kitchen because carbon copy and they're loud as fuck so we can hear them in the noisy as hell kitchen
Hey dude I really love your channel I used to bring computer parts to school back in 1997 and always got in trouble because I wouldn't be doing my work I would be messing around with dot matrix printers or old compact portable stuff even though I go into trouble I loved every minute of it
The spool of string isn't important, but it has a magnet on the end of it. There is a magnet in the lid that the printer uses to sense if the top is on or not. So I'm using the magnet to trick it into thinking the lid is on so it will print while open.
I had an Apple Imagewriter II back in the 80s that we used so much the pins got loose and we had it rebuilt at a local computer shop. I have a working model right now along with two other DMPs.
Thank you, I have an Olivetti DM105-S from my uncle with this problem, I’ll try this method. Next problem to solve is to find a color cartridge, I couldn’t find one on the whole Internet. Even my uncle can’t remember it printing in color!
Dot matrix impact is the only way to go if you need carbon copies. Many auto shops still use impact printers. Not to mention print costs. The main reason mainframes still print to the fold paper using a large impact printer is print cost (and speed). The impact print costs are so low, they are essentially zero, especially with the type of ribbon system this printer has. Laser printer costs is high. Even the best (and worst) laser printer is going to have much higher print cost and require more expensive paper and cannot do carbon copies when needed.
When I used to work on printers back in the 80s, we used to take the back cover off the print head, and dump the whole thing in a vat of trichloroethane (which you can't get anymore). Then we'd leave it there for a day. After, we'd let it dry then just repack the head with silicone grease. And she'd be good to go for a few more years.
In my experience the Epson printers have a connector on the bottom that the ribbon cables go into. They are just really hard to see because they are on the underside of the print head. The ribbon cables actually are bent in a Z shape to slip underneath.
I ended up completely disassembling the head for my Tandy DMP-106. I did get it back together, but the pins are a pain to properly align. Avoid that if you can.
Apple printers are great for linux because they have Postscript engines. Postscript is still supported and is still one of the best ways to print a document. I still use a humble HP 2100 as my main printer and any computer, including Amiga can print directly to it because I put a postscript personality card in it.
I remember being very jealous of my friends 24pin printer while I sat and waited for my MPS-801 to finish. How old do you think the ink you removed is?
I had a Commodore MPS 1250 (essentially a 1200 with one serial port replaced by a parallel connector and firmware that included support for it and IBM graphics that emulated an Epson FX printer). The printhead on that was considered a consumable, but a very durable one, with a lifespan measured in millions of characters, and was designed for easy replacement without opening the printer's case. While verifying this, I ran across a demonstration of how poor Commodore's editorial process could be: The section on printing custom character sets referred to the printer as an MPS 1200. This is probably the only section of the manual that got no revision from the MPS 1200 manual.
Jeeze, I wish stuff was that easy to repair these days. It's a shame a lot of these printers were thrown out too a decade or 2 ago because it turns out that they still are reliable for black and white text print. I think my mom uses a 20+ year old laser printer for her office at home because it isn't finicky like your average HP inkjet.
These days I go through more printers than paper...often the things don't survive more than about 3-5 cartridge changes... I revived a few inkjets by soaking the print head- but the sad thing is that the ink is more worth than the printer...the last reliable printer I have used was a Canon Pixma iX4000 from 2006
Last time I had to clean a print head, I ended up letting it soak for about 36 hours in a dish full of IPA before all of the dried ink stopped seeping out. This was a modern inkjet, too.
I want a dot matrix printer that doesn't have descenders to relive my CBM 1525 days. I'm considering getting a Tandy equivalent, which would work with my PCs, if I can find ink for it... Or maybe it would just be easier to find a matching truetype font and print it out on my modern inkjet.. not as fun though.
hey weird question but are you sure the ink is even soluble in alcohol? i know that hp inkjet ink is pretty non soluable in alcohol but water sucks it up like a sponge, wish i still had my dot matrix printers, print a sheet of EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE and test various spots on it with 70% alcohol vs 91% alcohol vs plain water, it could be possible that 70% containing more water would actually work better here
That printer dates from an era when Apple products (and most electronics) where still repairable and service friendly. How much has changed since then...... I bet Johnny Ive doesn’t have the words the “repair” or “serviceability ” in his dictionary 😁.
If your dot matrix printer works, you absolutely SHOULD NOT DO THIS! You would not be the first or 10 millionth person who, while trying to make something 1% better completely destroys it and makes it non-functioning. Like old cars, cleaning a decades old mechanical device can cause problems. Cleaning out the head can loosen pins that were being held in place (but still working) that would otherwise have broken and fallen out. Old dirt that is not interfering should be left alone unless there is a very good reason to do what you are doing. Like other things, if it ain't broke, don't fix it! There is a lot of wisdom in that phrase.
next up: unclogging the print head on the ink cartridge of an HP Thinkjet 2225C. (do not actually do this, it gets messy. better off to just buy a new cartridge.)
