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1027 Printer- worth saving?


yorgle

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I've got a very nice, complete, boxed 1027 printer with all manuals, cords, etc in excellent condition except that the rubber character wheels have completely deteriorated and crumbled off the printing wheel. I would expect finding a replacement printer head to be nearly impossible. Hate to throw it away, but at this point, it seems to be junk. Any suggestions?

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I've got a very nice, complete, boxed 1027 printer with all manuals, cords, etc in excellent condition except that the rubber character wheels have completely deteriorated and crumbled off the printing wheel. I would expect finding a replacement printer head to be nearly impossible. Hate to throw it away, but at this point, it seems to be junk. Any suggestions?

I can't imagine you will be able to get consumables for this classic. I had a bunch of rollers 'in stock' which dried out due to the packaging. You might have better luck with the bands, but without rollers, you don't have much.

 

I got through college with one of these, but it's time to move on ;)

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I've got a very nice, complete, boxed 1027 printer with all manuals, cords, etc in excellent condition except that the rubber character wheels have completely deteriorated and crumbled off the printing wheel. I would expect finding a replacement printer head to be nearly impossible. Hate to throw it away, but at this point, it seems to be junk. Any suggestions?

I can't imagine you will be able to get consumables for this classic. I had a bunch of rollers 'in stock' which dried out due to the packaging. You might have better luck with the bands, but without rollers, you don't have much.

 

I got through college with one of these, but it's time to move on ;)

 

Yeah, I do tend to live in the past, but it's such a nice looking, small, neat printer. I hate to see it go without at least trying to save it. I emailed Best Electronics as was suggested above. Hopefully, they'll be able to help. I've actually got several of the ink rollers still in the original packaging and I openned one up and the ink is still wet! Unfortunately, 24+ years proved too much for whatever the character wheels (bands?) were made of. I managed to print one page before the characters began crumbling off.

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So are new printer heads still being made that can fit on it?

 

I was going to say to not throw it away anyway, since the machine is in perfect condition except for the printer head and you have all the leads and manual and box for it. It'd be nice to keep it for historical purposes, plus if loads of people end up throwing their ones away when the printer heads fail it'll become much rarer and maybe worth a pretty penny.

Edited by Ross PK
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So are new printer heads still being made that can fit on it?

 

I was going to say to not throw it away anyway, since the machine is in perfect condition except for the printer head and you have all the leads and manual and box for it. It'd be nice to keep it for historical purposes, plus if loads of people end up throwing their ones away when the printer heads fail it'll become much rarer and maybe worth a pretty penny.

 

I didn't ask if these were new or simply "new old stock." I'll find out.

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geta 1025 printer.. and scrap the 1027 for parts. Its got a real nice high-powered solid state bridge rectifier. some nice regulators and heatsinks too. The printer mech, itself is tiawanese garbage.

The case is really nice. keep the case to saw up and use for parts to make original "xl looking" hardware like beetle does.

 

heheh.

 

Just my oppinion.

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  • 2 weeks later...
I've got a very nice, complete, boxed 1027 printer with all manuals, cords, etc in excellent condition except that the rubber character wheels have completely deteriorated and crumbled off the printing wheel. I would expect finding a replacement printer head to be nearly impossible. Hate to throw it away, but at this point, it seems to be junk. Any suggestions?

I just acquired a 1027 as part of an ebay lot (I only really wanted the XEGS). It was boxed. I had to test it, right? It works great. In fact it keeps the paper aligned better than the one I had in the 80s. I'm not going to use this, except to, every once in a while, break it out just to hear that familiar rat-a-tat-tat.

 

So, go ahead and laugh at me ;)

 

BTW, this guy refunded me excess shipping and the 1050 had a US Doubler under the hood. I leave the XEGS carts laying around because I like the way they look.

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I've got a very nice, complete, boxed 1027 printer with all manuals, cords, etc in excellent condition except that the rubber character wheels have completely deteriorated and crumbled off the printing wheel. I would expect finding a replacement printer head to be nearly impossible. Hate to throw it away, but at this point, it seems to be junk. Any suggestions?

I just acquired a 1027 as part of an ebay lot (I only really wanted the XEGS). It was boxed. I had to test it, right? It works great. In fact it keeps the paper aligned better than the one I had in the 80s. I'm not going to use this, except to, every once in a while, break it out just to hear that familiar rat-a-tat-tat.

 

So, go ahead and laugh at me ;)

 

BTW, this guy refunded me excess shipping and the 1050 had a US Doubler under the hood. I leave the XEGS carts laying around because I like the way they look.

 

I agree the 1027 is a great looking printer and fits nicely on a desktop. Sure it's noisy and slow, but hey, if efficiency is what you're after, that's what PCs are for. My only real complaint about the 1027 is the lack of a paper feed.

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geta 1025 printer.. and scrap the 1027 for parts.

I'll second that. The 1025 is a much more sustainable and 'usable' printer. I had to ditch my original 1027 (boy I loved it then! :)) because the head wheel mech was wearing/becoming misaligned and the NOS ink rollers were shot out of the package. And it was impossible to reink them properly.

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On a related note, what ribbons work with this printer? Where is the best place to buy? Can they be bought at other than atari dealers?

Ribbon? We don't need no stinkin' ribbons! The 1027 uses an 'ink roller' to wet the print head. I'll bet you can buy these from B&C.

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I had to ditch my original 1027 (boy I loved it then! :)) because the head wheel mech was wearing/becoming misaligned

 

Hm, what were the symptoms of that? I had a 1027 a long time ago, it developed a problem where it'd print 2 half-characters (maybe it was trying to print a B, and I'd end up with the right half of an A and the left half on a B instead). At first it only happened every once in a while... later on the amount of garbage on each page was maybe half the page, and I junked it (was using a much nicer 24-pin dot matrix by then anyway).

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On a related note, what ribbons work with this printer? Where is the best place to buy? Can they be bought at other than atari dealers?

Ribbon? We don't need no stinkin' ribbons! The 1027 uses an 'ink roller' to wet the print head. I'll bet you can buy these from B&C.

 

I got a new 1027 printer head unit and two new ink rollers from Best Electronics for $49.00.

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Final Report: Spent the better part of all day installing the new printer head. Had to disassemble 85% of the printer. Got 'er all back together and realized the character wheel was 180 deg. off. Had to re-disassemble and re-reassemble. This time I accidently let the cable that pulls the head back and forth get too loose and it unravelled from the pulley. Much cursing and head pounding followed. Finally got everything back together. Second test. Prints great the first 3/4 of the page but fades out as it gets to the right side of the paper. Paper feed slipping too. Printer is junk. Hate it. Want to destroy it.... don't do what I have done....

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Hm, what were the symptoms of that? I had a 1027 a long time ago, it developed a problem where it'd print 2 half-characters (maybe it was trying to print a B, and I'd end up with the right half of an A and the left half on a B instead).

Yeah that would be a good example, half characters or wildly misaligned text. On top of that NOS inkrolls were crap out of the box (and this was a long time ago when I ditched mine), and it was impossible to ink them well enough for acceptable printing.

 

Paper feed slipping too. Printer is junk. Hate it. Want to destroy it.... don't do what I have done....

It was decent enough in its day, but that day has loooooong since past. It really is only worth being part of a collection and not a working unit. There are so many better options if you want to maintain an impact printer.

Edited by remowilliams
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