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[WolfWing]

That article is hilarious..

 

Hahah. holy crap.. 9 minutes to print one page, and even then, the vertical allignment sucks total ass worse than a worn out typewriter.. And then, its single-sheet feed.. so if you're printing more than one page, you better come back 9 minutes later and feed another sheet for it..

 

Thats about 10cps or less.. A good secretary with an electric typewriter can out-run a 1027 pretty easily... hahahah..

 

I think that if I needed letter-quality printing capability, back in those days, I'd pay the $699 for the REAL LQ printer, versus dropping $300 on that (1027) pile of useless junk..

I quite agree. The people who are spending their time and energy on reviving the 1027 just need to let it go. Perhaps it filled a certain niche at the time it came out, for people who really absolutely positively could not afford anything better, but the world is much different now and the 1027 doesn't have a place in it anymore. (And for those who would respond, "well, you could say the same thing about Atari's computers, too, so why are you picking on the 1027 when you still like the computers?" ... no. The computers are still very enjoyable and useful today, but the 1027 in particular has been made completely obsolete, even if new print heads did exist for it.)

 

If you're feeling nostalgic for the 1027, clean it up all nice and pretty and put it on a shelf next to your bed, so it will be the first thing you see when you open your eyes in the morning. But if you really want good letter-quality printing from the 8-bit computers, I think you'd be better off figuring out how to connect modern USB-only printers without resorting to APE, or spending the $50 on a new XDM121 from B&C. Leave the 1027 in the past where it belongs.

 

Oh, at 10 minutes a sheet, I'm not looking to USE the 1027 (well, once or twice just to run it - but only after the possibilities of replacing the head with a modern remake is exhausted or realized). It was just a pretty nifty thing to pick up really cheap on EBay.

 

I am merely documenting the head because I can and no one else has. Just my small contribution.

 

As for a modern printer: I have already mentioned they still make parallel port dot matrixes. The 8-bit FAQ mentions that for inkjet and laser printers to look for Epson (RX, LX, MX, etc) emulation mode. I've also seen Epson compatible dot matrixes and even Epson dot matrixes. It may not make text that is pretty looking, but it works. A laser printer or inkjet should look prettier than dot matrix, at least for text. Of course, said inkjet or laser printer would need to have a parallel port.

 

I don't know what it takes to make a printer with a parallel (or serial) port and Epson emulation work once you have the proper cable adaptors and SIO to RS-232 Serial or Centronics Parallel connected ot your Atari. It might require writing your own driver for it. Ideally it would be plug and play, but how lucky would that be?

[oracle_jedi]

 

Thats about 10cps or less.. A good secretary with an electric typewriter can out-run a 1027 pretty easily... hahahah..

 

I think that if I needed letter-quality printing capability, back in those days, I'd pay the $699 for the REAL LQ printer, versus dropping $300 on that (1027) pile of useless junk..

 

Back in the mid to late 80s, if you really had $700 to drop on a "REAL LQ printer" you probably weren't using an Atari for word processing in the first place.

 

I had a 1027 from about 88 to about 93 when the ink ran dry.

 

I did exactly what Atari said it did. Letter Quality print, albeit extremely slowly. Plugged straight into the SIO jack and was supported by all the two word processors I used - Mini Office and First XLent Word Processor. For those people like myself who needed very occasional letter quality print, it also had the advantage of being extremely light and compact - it would sit on the small shelves those old computer desks came with that were meant for your tape cassettes.

 

The price was very attractive. I checked back in Atari User magazine from 1985, and the 1027 is offered for 150 pounds, whereas other daisy-wheel printers were closer to 300, and typically required the 850 interface and a special cable, or one of the 3rd party Centronics print interfaces. The 1025 was never offered in Europe and even if it was, it was still a dot-matrix who's NLQ print was nowhere near as good as the 1027. The Europeans got the 1029 printer which IIRC used a 7-pin head and so was not even capable of the print quality of the 1025.

 

To level criticism at the 1027 because its print head design was not consistent with a device meant for printing hundreds of pages is just silly. The printer was never offered with a sheet feeder. It was suitable for printing one or two pages, such as a short letter to the bank, or your school, or your CV - back when we used letters and not e-mails for everything.

[MEtalGuy66]

If you look at that ANTIC article reviewing it, specifically the example of a 1027 printout, you'll see that the vertical allignment of the letters totally sucks.. This is hardly "on the par" with typewriters of the day.. and really, negates the whole "letter quality" of the device if you ask me.. If it cant print a straight line of text, it does not matter that the letters are stamped rather than dot-matrix.. If you ever submitted a document printed on that thing for any sort of formal/legal purpose, the person reading it would wonder how old/worn-out your typewriter is... Even in 1985, Im afraid that thing was a total piece of shit and not anywhere near worth $300.00.

 

And yeah, I know quite a few people who were using 8-bit machines for business related tasks back then, and had SERIOUS AMOUNTS of money invested in their printer..

 

The plain fact is that a decent printer cost the same no matter what computer you had it hooked up to.. An ATARI, a DISK DRIVE, and a Centronics printer interface cost less than half what an APPLE or IBM machine would. And when it comes down to brass-tacks, the printer was what determined the quality of the final output, where business related tasks were concerned.. So.. Yeah.. heh.. It made sense for the small/home business guy to save money by using an ATARI..

 

But it doesn't make sense at all to spend $300.00 (a formidable "chunk of change" in those days) on a printer that produces output that looks like it came out of an old mechanical typewriter that hasn't been serviced since 1937 and has had a hard life.. 1027 owners found that out the hard way, unfortunately..

 

The printhead design in that thing is an application of technology usually used in the small printers of old adding machines and cash registers.. For receipts, or adding machine "tapes" the text allignment isn't that critical.. No one is going to scrutinize, as long as it's legible.. But for a dedicated device that is sold for printing documents of so called "letter quality," this type of print head design is a very poor match for the application, and produces poor results... and very slowly as we've already stated.....

 

Anywayze.. Heh.. Im sorry.. It sucked.. And I'm afraid it even sucked "for the price"... In fact, I would have felt "ripped off" if I had bought one.

 

I had a SEIKO 9pin who's "NLQ" (even in those days) was good enough to fool anyone's naked eye. And As I recall, the SIO-centronics interface cost about $50.00. This setup would do 120cps draft and 25cps in "NLQ". five or six times faster than the 1027, and with perfect character allignment..