Best DOT MATRIX printer for Amiga

[YouKnowWho]

For someone who wishes to relive the full Amiga era experience of printing out my color images and assignments for school on a dot matrix printer with the lovely sounds, what would you guys recommend? Anyone still make ribbons for those things? Especially color ones?

[DamienD]

I wouldn't use an old dot matrix printer; as you say it will be a nightmare to get the consumables.

You can use modern printers with generic drivers though; and passthrough adapters for the LPT connection.

[Retro1234]

I looked a few years back and looked like there are some ribbons mainly Epsom iirc you could probably print very cheaply but can you imagine the noise!

I think the Epsom printer might be pricey they still get thrown out but not so much now days.

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by YouKnowWho

For someone who wishes to relive the full Amiga era experience of printing out my color images and assignments for school on a dot matrix printer with the lovely sounds, what would you guys recommend? Anyone still make ribbons for those things? Especially color ones?

You can't be serious?

I had a colour dot matrix printer, but it was a complete fiasco, for two main reasons:

Get a nice smelly new ink ribbon and you'd be fine at first, but then after a while the dot matrix pins would transfer the CMYK colours to each other on the ribbon, and the results would become "muddier" and "brown" after a while.

The NOISE. I had this printer with my Amiga when I still lived with my parents, but my mother couldn't stand the ZEEEEE-ZEEEEE noise of the printing itself, so I was forbidden to use it after a certain time in the evening.

Later on, I got my first inkjet printer, a lovely model that lasted for years, and I had much better results, especially on HQ inkjet paper, and it was a lot quieter, even if the costs were higher. But this was back in the 1990s, long before the high cost of inkjet ink these days.

EDIT: And in college, there were plenty of dot-matrix printers in which we printed out our assignments, with the corresponding switch boxes for three to four PCs to one printer, yet, ironically, we had a single laser printer and the queues that formed to use that for much better results...!

[Predseda]

I hated and still hate the noise of dot matrix printers. I can not stand it and I am thanking God every day he wiped them out from the Earth surface.

So the answer to the question of best matrix printer is: no matrix printer.

[lesta_smsc]

Citizen did some good ones back in the day. Think a few of these still about.

[nivam]

Dot matrix printers. The most hated thing in that era of computing. Ugly, unreliable, noisy and less than mediocre output quality. I still have one Epson LX 810 or something in the loft.

[jasonsbeer]

I don't know about color, but I reviewed the current status of dot matrix printer consumables availability. To my surprise, it appears Oki is still in business and, apparently, still making ribbon cartridges. I picked up an Okidata 180, which has both C= serial and Centronix ports. You can still buy ribbons and print heads for it, although the print heads may be NOS.

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by lesta_smsc

Citizen did some good ones back in the day. Think a few of these still about.

My printer back then was a Citizen Swift 240C, it was quite good in the feature set.

Originally Posted by nivam

Dot matrix printers. The most hated thing in that era of computing. Ugly, unreliable, noisy and less than mediocre output quality. I still have one Epson LX 810 or something in the loft.

And the technology is not much better than manual typewriters on steroids. Same principles, certainly.

[Konrad]

I remember how I printed Sim City maps on these endless-paper sheets. Or pictures painted in DPaint (printed in b&w, duh!). And I will never get this annoying sound out of my head.
Damn, was I happy when I got a HP Deskjet 500C...

I would never want to own a dotmatrix printer again, but I would surely smile seeing and hearing one in live action on an Amiga again . I somehow understand YouKnowWho's nostalgic feeling.

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by Konrad

Damn, was I happy when I got a HP Deskjet 500C...

My first inkjet printer was a Canon BJC 240, lovely little thing it was, served me well for years.

[Zak]

Dot matrix printers have the advantage over old ink jet printers that their type face is very good, that is if you use 24 pins/needles. Ink jet printers are better for printing graphics.

The best color printers are I think the Star LC10 Color with 8 needles if you are more into like early 80's and some Epson printers with 24 needles from later 80's. But Epson started to become cheaper and less reliable in the ninetees and I had a really bad printer from them by the time around 1993 I think.

You can massively improve the printout using a program like Turboprint, when I remember the name correctly, and that applies to any printer, good or bad.

[AmigaWorld]

Actually I had found one dot matrix printer on ebay at insane price. https://www.ebay.com/itm/Epson-EX-80...0/153851583060

I used to own the Star NX1000C dot matrix printer. It was a 9 Pin printer. The quality was not all that great either. But it worked well for the Amiga 1200. I have not missed the noisy printer.

After that my first inkjet printer was the HP Deskjet 500C Color printer. That printer was
great! And it worked great with my Amiga 1200.

[Cobe]

My first printer on Amiga was Epson LQ100 and I remember it fondly.
I cant say that I like its noise as much as I like the sound of the floppy drive but it never bothered me.
For sure I never thought to trow it in the dumpster like I did with some hp inkjet that I had that had pretty bad ratio of (un)successfully grabed pieces of paper..

[Foebane]

It's a shame you can't get printers by themselves nowadays, they're usually combined with damned scanners for some reason.

Or at least, I HAVEN'T found any standalone printers ONLY, anyway.

[freehand]

Originally Posted by Foebane

It's a shame you can't get printers by themselves nowadays, they're usually combined with damned scanners for some reason.

Or at least, I HAVEN'T found any standalone printers ONLY, anyway.

Canon pixma range & Epson SureColor Range.

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by freehand

Canon pixma range & Epson SureColor Range.

Canon Pixma looks like exactly what I said, a combined printer with scanner, which I don't want the latter.

And Epson SureColor seems to cost a bomb.

In fact, both of those makes have poor listings on Amazon.

[drHirudo]

The best Dot Matrix printer I used is the Panasonic KX-P2130.
[ Show youtube player ]

It has some features that even the most modern printers can't replace. Like for example automatically printing on three layers of paper - you handle invoice or receipt to the consumer for signature, then leave the top copy for him and get the remaining.

[freehand]

Originally Posted by Foebane

Canon Pixma looks like exactly what I said, a combined printer with scanner, which I don't want the latter.

And Epson SureColor seems to cost a bomb.

In fact, both of those makes have poor listings on Amazon.

The most recent:

Epson SURECOLOR SC-P400
Epson SURECOLOR SC-P600
Epson SURECOLOR SC-P800

Canon PRO-200
Canon PRO-300
Canon PRO-1000

Are all stand alone, price and availability is another story I was quoting "It's a shame you can't get printers by themselves nowadays"

[Overmann]

Star printers are pretty damn good, especially the 24pin printers. They are quite easy to come by as well.