Windows has awful backwards compatibility. Try running something written for XP. Its a coin flip. 95 or older forget it. WINE on Linux has near perfect compatibility with old windows applications.
Windows 11 supports 5.25 floppy disk drives and IRDA infrared communication, Linux does not. When it comes to printing on HP Deskjet 980cxi and Laserjet P1005 CUPS gives better quality than MS, so it depends. 🙂
modprobe -v floppy Linux absolutely does support 5.25 floppies. Historically there was no demand for support at all because the Linux kernel is much newer than 5.25 floppies but support was added at some point. Just need to enable it. Check your distro's documentation.
I'm amazed that you figured out how to get Windows to communicate with that printer. People like you actually know how to use a computer and have some fun with it. I love trying to make devices work together and make Windows do fun and interesting things that people usually don't do. I honestly wouldn't have been sure if Windows would be able to print to a Commodore printer. This is beautiful!
Windows is my Achilles Heel here This is easy to set-up under Linux These old devices used simple, plain-text interfaces that were very thoroughly documented
I remember having an Epson... it was touted as great because it was 9-pin printer, and when I was in school, printing NLQ was necessary because teachers frowned upon using a computer to write your papers. :) There were teachers that expected us to still use typewriters. Those were the days. I forget the model number after all these years, but I got it for Christmas one year... it served me through college in to 1995 when I finally got an HP inkjet. The one that required you to replace the cart to print in color. :) I used my Amiga 500 all through college... it was super useful, I already had software for it, and it did everything I needed, including writing my C programs for class. :) Lattice C. I miss those days... when computers were considered "nerdy"....
When I was in like junior high or so, my teacher was very impressed when I started turning in printed stuff (my handwriting was quite bad), they thought we'd spend the grand or two on a Laserwriter. I pointed out "Nope, I bought a daisywheel printer at university surplus for like $3." That thing had very nice printouts! Loud though, I'd start something printing, go out to the living room and my parents are like "How long is it going to take, I can't hear the TV!" LOL. They were usually ran inside some kind of sound-deadening cabinet but I had it just sitting on a table in my room. It was too loud to be in the room with it when it was printing.
I owned one of these printers back in the days. I configured a word processor in Commodore 64 with this model of printer to write scandinavian letters. Mission accomplished! My father used this setup for years as a secretery in a non profit association. Brings back a lot of fun memories - and frustration... Living in a non-american literate environment always brought struggles. But hey, american restrictions are there for intelligent people to solve.
This brings back memories. Love the sound. It also just showed me how I was so glad to move on from this technology. If this was a modern printer, you'd have a subscription for the ribbon....oh and a firmware update to prevent you from buying cheap ribbons.
I had an MPS803 back in the days of C64. If I'm not mistaken, I remember it had a switch to choose between "Graphical mode" and "Normal". I remember using it with GEOS: I was in high school and used to print some of my homework with it: that made one of my teacher particularily happy because she was a fan of the Commodore stuff! My brother used to print lots of stuff for the job he had, we were using tractor feed and I remember the noise the printer made, going on for entire afternoons or evenings...
I had a Star Micronics Gemini 10x printer from around 1983 to the mid 90s. I originally used it on my Apple 2+ and finished with an IBM 386sx clone when it mechanically died. I believe it was Epson Mx80 compatible, but the best feature is that it used old fashioned typewriter ribbons which were didn't last very long, but were extremely cheap and available at virtually all stores. It had virtually no sound proofing and was not the quickest, but was a workhorse.
Whoa! I use an MPS-1200 and the only difference seems to be it has another Commodore serial port instead of that wide parallel one you got. Recently bought a new compatible ribbon for it too! My "backup" printer is actually an MPS-801! Slow and loud, shakes when the print head slides back for the next line, but it gets the job done. There's so little you can do with its limited features, makes it beautiful actually. Built like a tank.
Took me right back to the 80’s ! I didn’t have Commodore as I was a ZX Spectrum teen! I had an Epson Dot Matrix but can’t remember which one it was for the life of me. Later got it running with my first PC - an 8086 running Windows 1.0 and DOS😊
Using a 1985 printer is like having power, agency, access to technology and cultural capital. It makes you a cool guy to own a printer in 1985. And women who got employed in the office were serious and professional about printing with this
I never had a Commodore brand printer, but did have a Star NX 1000 with my Amiga 500. Agonizingly slow to print graphics (not to mention use up the entire ribbon quickly), but for printing plain text, it was fantastic (especially NLQ). I ~~~LOVE~~~ the fact that any computer in almost every OS can still work with generic printers, and I hope it stays that way. Epson still makes 9pin and 24pin B&W printers today. If I had the space (money not the issue), I'd get one. Quick and dirty printing is far more important and useful to me than "perfect" laser, thermal, or inkjet printing.
Parallel was 36-pin centronics, as you discovered, 50-pin was widely used for SCSI devices, especially in the early days. Later SCSI-1 devices tended to have DB-25 connectors that were half the size but still huge compared to USB, let alone USB-C. The model name Citizen 120D brings back slightly unpleasant memories. We had one at school in the late 90s because no one wanted to pay for ink and dot matrix printers were thrown at you if you didn't get out of the door fast enough, and it had a few downsides. The tractor feed could only be set up to pull, which means wasting one sheet of paper for every print job. The printer also had some massive sharp edges somewhere, I remember cutting my hands trying to insert paper or something like that. At some point we replaced it with an Epson LQ-100, which had an automatic sheet feeder and the best print quality I've ever seen on a dot matrix printer. I still have that sitting around somewhere. A side note on the MPS1270: it came in two versions. The 1270 only had serial ports (two if I remember correctly) while the 1270A had one serial and one parallel port. I guess the A might stand for Amiga or maybe AT-compatible. My first Commodore inkjet was a 1270, unfortunately I blew it up by accidentally using an AC power brick instead of a DC one. Later I had a 1270A but hardly ever used it so I eventually sold it to a collector.
Theese nice memories... I used an NEC CP 7 (4 colours, 24pin, a3-format) on an Commodore Amiga. Both with TeX and Metafont, wich gave a very nice professional look) but also with Wordworth and TurboPrint. In my service time at the German Bundeswehr (mandatory in 1989 - I had to serve originaly 18 months back than, but it was reduced to 15 months due to the fall of the Berlin wall while serving) I used the Amiga + NEC CP 7 in the kompanie´s office to print forms on matrizes. Still, I like the idea to use dot matrix printers on spirit carbon matrizes. Back than they were mostly violet, but you could get other colours also. So you actually could do multicolour by printing the matrizes with different coulerd spirit carbon layers after each other and print up to 30 to 200 copys (in degrading quality of course, and only violet stands 200 copies). Still have violet matrizes flying arround. Other colours are hard to get nowerdays - exept for green (green is still used for tartoo preparing)
Take the ribbon cartridge out of your printer and lay it on some newspaper. Gently, and I mean gently, pop the top off of the cartridge and spray it lightly with some penetrating oil such as WD-40. This will readjuvenate the ink on the ribbon and help it flow and cover the ribbon. Let it dry for a few days and reassemble and reinstall and voila brand new print cartridge!!!
You can reink - this was popular back in the day. Generally you buy printers ink in a small bottle and then remove the top of the cartridge housing and lightly drip it on top of the ribbon it will drip all the way down, start with very light coat, it you use to much it will over soak and sit on the bottom of the ribbon cartridge and smudge Another method was a small tray on a sponge you take out a strip of ribbon and lay it on the sponge and drip ink on the sponge and spool it, however there is a lot of ribbon in the cartridge , it will take about 15 to 20 mins Similarly you can use pliers or tweezers with sponge and soak the sponge with ink and wind the tape The same with inkjet cartridge, the factory hole was sealed, you drill it out, add about 55ml printers in and place a self tapping screw - refilled for @ 20 cents High end dot matrix have millions of characters use before they need service, i worked at a government office in 80's usually the ribbon fibers make a mess, the machines had the printer head removed, it took 2 to 3 days, they would dissemble it clean it and polish the pins, some say they were just soaked in petrol / thinners / mentholated spirits , i dont know, at times we paid extra for the exchange service which was about 30 mins down time You can use windows generic 9 or 18 pin, but not all features are available eg bold underline, there is also generic text which is close to single run typewriter font similar to a stock font - they issue is it will only form a letter once like draft mode and it may not be bi-directional eg , it prints left to right then carriage return and prints again, bi directional is when it reached the end of the line it does a line feed and prints the next line backwards from right to left - saving time and motion - it is not quite twice as fast as most of the time is the printing not the head moving back to the start when
I had a Okimate 120 years ago. It was a beast but did not work very well with the Amiga for me as I was using print drivers provided by Commodore. Things have likely changed since then.
Well, I work at an airport. You would be amazed how much stuff there is that is ancient mainframe-software, written in COBOL, running in IBM 3270 terminal-emulators on Win11-PC´s. Hidden behind a Windows-esque GUI. Why? Same reason why we use dot matrix printers: They do not fail, regardless how much our staff abuses them. They just work, each and every day.
Well Microsoft did recognise commodore being a company at all because the commodore kernal and basic rom was provided to commodore by Microsoft. Lately Microsoft even published ms basic on github including the commodore specific assembler flags
8:50: Commodore isn't on the list because Commodore didn't make printers for PCs. When Windows 3 shipped and printer companies had to start making their own device drivers for Windows (except HP, which paid MSFT to do it for them), Commodore was well on their way to going bankrupt, was irrelevant in the US marketplace, and as I said, did not make PC printers. Citizen, on the other hand, did have printer drivers in Windows. Should have tried that first.
The old Dot Matrix printers usually had the IBM format or Epson FX or Apple Write emulator They usually had a dip switches setting for the computer your using. The newer ones could be initialized by the drivers from Windows Telling the printer what format to use I remember when 25 pin serial port or the 36 pin centronic There were also some other odd pin sizes The serial port was for unix or other machines, so if you were using a machine like a phone company central office the serial connection could go to a screen cga or a printer It was really cool back then.
I had a Star Micronix 10x printer in the 80s/90s which might have been the loudest dot matrix printer ever. It did give me around 12 years of service though. In high school, I had the advantage of it being in the basement away from the living area of the house.
I still print like it's 1992 with my Citizen Swift 24E I installed it as a swift 9, windows doesn't have a perfect driver match, but even the 'colour kit' (height adjusting motor that allows a colour ribbon to be used) works correctly!
I had a Star (and later an Epson) with 4-colour ribbon. If you think this was slow, image how long it took to print A3 with having to make 4 passes. Still, colour prints were the bomb in those days.
you could probably (if lucky enough to have four of em) line four of these up so that the output of the first goes into the paper feed tray of the next, and then have differently colored ink ribbons in each and in theory with an appropriate program print in color.
This video made me go look at my vic-1525 dot-matrix printer. I see a suspicious looking little cover on the back that looks like its just the right size to hide a parallel port. It normally connects through a din connector. I'll have to investigate this more later.
My first printer was a Fujitsu DL-900. It was one of the first 24-pin printers, and it had pretty good resolution, high enough to make text at size 6 legible. What should I do with such high-resolution power? Do I have high responsibility? Nope: I used that printer to make cheat sheets for my exams, print them in minuscule font size, cut those in easy to hide strips and sell those to my school's friends. I never got caught and got some money to burn on arcade machines.
Like a daisy wheel, the MPS-801 uses a hammer but that is where the simularity ends. The MPS-801 offers greater flexability as font and graphics a formed with individual pixels but unlike a daisy wheel, it is far from letter quality.
Something I learned many years ago is that Windows 95 can use 16 bit Windows 3.1 printer drivers. I wonder if Windows 98 and 98SE can? How about Windows Me? 32 bit NT4, XP, or 2000?
Only for printing text as hardcopy backup but you would want a printer that still has driver support and new, not old stock, replacement ribbon. So for most applications my answer would be no :-(
I connected the printer via the parallel port on the back of my Boxx workstation; old school style. I do have a centronix to USB adaptor the I may try out in a future video. Thanks for watching!
I was able to find one, it has some yellowing, anyone ever try whitening these before? Not sure how hard or dangerous it would be to disassemble the case
@@jamesc2327 I hope that it works well for you. I have never retrobrighted a case before. if you decide to do so be carefull whith the plastic as it gets brittle with time.
Microsoft's approach to backwards compatibility is weird. On the one hand Windows still supports a 40 year old printer that, for all we know, you are the only person ever to have used with it, but on the other hand they dropped support for NTVDM so 16-bit DOS/Windows applications are no longer usable and it kind of feels like it should be the other way round...
@@filefly Thank-you for the honorary title. It would be reasonably impressive if he shows how to interface the CPM based computer to a shortwave radio and access and print images from abandoned geosynchronous satellites. The data transfer rate on the image download is 300 Baud.
@@300BaudStudios It's more of a end of the world project when there's no grid. The fact that you did get that dot matrix to print graphics and found ink cartridge replacements means you're smarter than average.
