Can anyone identify this dot matrix printer next to a Neo-Geo?

[Chuck(G)]

Somewhere I have print samples from my Durango F85 PCs with the high-res options installed. It uses a film ribbon and has downloadable fonts that actually look quite nice. Still 9-pin, but with microspacing in both the X- and Y- directions. Not horribly fast, but very interesting.
When the move was made to the 186/286 Poppy system, there was a project to take the printer section and offer it as a standalone NLQ printer. I don't think it made it past the speculative stage, but here's a product sheet

If you're lucky enough to have an F85 with the hi-res option, here's the fonts disk image. Loads under DX85.

 

[seaken]

It's been awhile since I used these types of printers so I could be wrong on this. But I thought these 9-pin printers could be manipulated by software to create much higher quality prints than the built in fonts or simply sending a printer description file to the printer. I remember using software that could do some pretty nice output, albeit very slow, on even the lowliest printer. Of course, then 24-pin printers became more common for NLQ and even color.

Seaken

 

[Chuck(G)]

I may have old disks for the Epson/DOS "PrettyPrint" or something like it.

 

[famicomaster2]

It's been awhile since I used these types of printers so I could be wrong on this. But I thought these 9-pin printers could be manipulated by software to create much higher quality prints than the built in fonts or simply sending a printer description file to the printer. I remember using software that could do some pretty nice output, albeit very slow, on even the lowliest printer. Of course, then 24-pin printers became more common for NLQ and even color.

Some of them can, but they are treated as a graphics printer most often. Because the SR1000 has such large vertical line splits, the graphics mode results in characters that are vertically stretched to nearly 3x their normal size, and they become illegible quickly. On top of that, the pins are so large that no matter what font you send it, it will always appear visibly blocky.

 

[Zap!]

Nope, never seen one for sale.

Between both videos there was 154 views and 1 comment.
The only comment reads: "SR 1000 was sold by Sears in the 1980's. This looks like it was manufactured by Citizen."

The output quality of this printer is fairly appalling. I figured I'd stick some paper in and try to capture it for you all. The first image is "Standard" quality, and the second is "Near-Letter Quality." If you weren't aware, NLQ was meant to be competitive with the output of a typewriter or other types of full character printers. To put it bluntly, calling this "NLQ" on the printer is laughable, let alone praising it in the magazine! The dot pitch is absolutely horrible, even for a 9 pin printer. Also, the space between each line which you can see here is the minimum that I could ever get it to give me. Enjoy!

Over at AtariAge in this sister thread, a highly knowledgeable user said the following about the ribbon:

These folks have ribbons for the shinwa nlq 180 in their brochure.

https://www.fullmark.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Fullmark_Ribbon_Catalogue_2013.pdf

Granted, its an old one.

The following textfile suggests the SR1000 and the Shinwa NLQ180's (and a bunch of others') ribbons are compatible with 3 commodore printers, suggesting a standardized cassette.

http://www.zimmers.net/cbmpics/cbm/printers/ribbons.txt

Hopefully, that will be a good lead for getting ribbon. As for the output, I actually still have stuff that I printed on it. I will have to look for some, but I am nearly certain that it did not have the space between lines as shown in your pics. I will look tonight for a newsletter I printed, among other things.

 

[Zap!]

@famicomaster2 Did you ever find out if that was the right ribbon?

 

[rmay635703]

HP InkJet 935c. Still have it. No longer works, it's out of ink. My uncle gave it to us for free when I was still little, and when it ran out of ink for the third time in our ownership of it and they no longer produced cartridges, it was given to 8 or 9 year old me, who promptly found out that "low ink" is not "empty," to my parents dismay. I was no longer allowed to play with the old printer and it was stuffed in the attic, where it resides.

First one I actually used was a bubblejet, slightly different technology but better in a way. Canon BJC-2110. Still have it, still works. Has new ink cartridges, I've got 2 more sealed for it too. I also have the Canon IS-22 color scanner cartridge for it!

I understand your comment, but I counter with "Early inkjets were extremely expensive." The BJC-2110 I mentioned came to me with the PowerMac G4 it was originally paired with, which was used for photo editing because it provided exceptional color quality and could print on photo paper, two things which no color dot matrix could do.

The PJ-1080A is an inkjet I'd be very proud to own. I've actually got a saved search on eBay for one!

Alps MD-5000! I believe the only dye sub document printer ever sold. I'd love to have one, but the paper is getting difficult to find. Ink is extremely plentiful! I think I might pick up the one on eBay at some point just to have in my collection, even if I can't use it. Lots of reviews of the time state that they're horrible at printing full page images, however. Horrible problems with banding!

Alps Micro-dry printers were sold through 2010, with OEM supplies through 2015.

I ran a t-shirt business and despite being high resolution these printers were extremely slow so I ran a Shinko CHC-545 wax thermal instead

 

[famicomaster2]

@famicomaster2 Did you ever find out if that was the right ribbon?

No, I've still not seen photo of one that looks close.

Alps Micro-dry printers were sold through 2010, with OEM supplies through 2015.

I ran a t-shirt business and despite being high resolution these printers were extremely slow so I ran a Shinko CHC-545 wax thermal instead

That's a little different than document printing, which was the point of the MD-5000.

 

[rmay635703]

No, I've still not seen photo of one that looks close.


That's a little different than document printing, which was the point of the MD-5000.

I literally knew dozens of people that owned them, they were marketed by “start your own home business “ types of places for literally everything but document printing.

Usually bumper stickers, regular stickers, tags, keychains, transparencies, transfers of various types, photo id and cd labels along with other novelties.

 

[famicomaster2]

I literally knew dozens of people that owned them, they were marketed by “start your own home business “ types of places for literally everything but document printing.

Usually bumper stickers, regular stickers, tags, keychains, transparencies, transfers of various types, photo id and cd labels along with other novelties.

Interesting! I've always wanted one, but the only ones that ever turn up are SCSI and cost a fortune untested.

The only advertising material I ever saw was calling it a color document printer, and some period reviews I've seen complained of horrible banding in full page prints, so I wrote them off of that kind of task. Were they any good?

 

[rmay635703]

Interesting! I've always wanted one, but the only ones that ever turn up are SCSI and cost a fortune untested.

The only advertising material I ever saw was calling it a color document printer, and some period reviews I've seen complained of horrible banding in full page prints, so I wrote them off of that kind of task. Were they any good?

Oddly printers of this type first came out in the 90’s

There were ways of dealing with the banding by using a very coarse half tone. Folks that did stickers, foil and other novelties didn’t have to worry about banding because they only printed solid colors.

3rd parties at one point offered many very expensive specialized supplies including even foil/sparkle inks for these printers.

Dark T-Shirt and weeding transfers were another novelty.

As towards how well all this worked I have no idea, many novelty/trophy stores had a machine in the corner so it must have worked well enough and some of the operators really liked them but many times they were also selling machines and supplies
but for me I wasn’t impressed, too slow and supplies were too expensive.