Atari Printing

[dazpants1]

Hi,

 

I have an Atari 1029 printer but i have found it really difficult to finf printer ribbons for it.

 

I was wondering if anyone knew if it was possible to print to a more modern type of printer?

 

Thanks

 

Daz

[firestorm]

You can buy printer ribbon from Best Electronic.

 

http://www.best-electronics-ca.com/

[Sub(Function(:))]

and as the site is so horrible to navigate:

 

Atari 1029 Printer New fresh Black Ribbon Cartridge CB101923 $12.95

 

You wil find it at the URL http://www.best-elec...er_printers.htm

 

You need to send an email to bradley and ask him for a price with shipping to the UK there is no automated Checkout (sales link on the main page). But he is a recommended seller in these parts.

Edited May 28, 2012 by Sub(Function(:))

[dazpants1]

Thank you everyone for your help.

 

I have tried Best Electronics but when i emailed them i got the following reply -

 

"The Atari 1029 Ribbons are in stock Darren. Because of problems with PayPal and International Credit Card companies, we no longer send out Atari International orders the more cost effective US First Class Mail shipping Darren. To send any Atari order to the UK, the shipping cost along for the 1st pound of shipping weight would be U$D 37 and up.

 

The only way around this International shipping problem is to ship an Atari order to a friend or relative here is the US and have them ship the order to you after they receive it Darren."

 

If i understand the above correctly the postage would be at least $37. This postage seemed a little high for me unfortunately as i only need 1 or 2 or them. I'm not expecting to print loads lol.

Thank you again for your help.

[+bob1200xl]

In answer to your original question: yes - you can print to modern printers. Best to use a P:R Connection interface to the parallel port on the printer. I use an HP 4MP laser printer on my system. If you want to print graphics and that kind of thing, you need to find an Epson compatible printer.

 

Bob

[+David_P]

Option B is an SIO2PC cable and the APE software, that will let your Atari print to your PC printer (and use your PC for drive storage).

[Almost Rice]

If i understand the above correctly the postage would be at least $37. This postage seemed a little high for me unfortunately as i only need 1 or 2 or them. I'm not expecting to print loads lol.

 

That means he is only quoting you Priority Mail International. For 4lbs or less. It can be $8 to15 if he used First Class International. He probably does not want to use FCI because it has no real tracking.

[dazpants1]

@bob1200xl - That sounds really cool, thank you.

@David_P - I'm currently waiting for a SIO2PC usb from Sloopy and as i've never used one of these before it really sound interesting that i may be able to use this instead.

@Almost Rice - cool name by the way....Thank you for clearing that up as i wasn't sure if i was reading it correctly. I will buy a couple and do some printing old school too as i would like to see my 1029 spitting out paper again with the familiar rat a tat tat sound lol.

 

Thank you again to everyone. As always you've been an absolute wonderful fountain of Atari knowledge and now if have gone from no printing options to 3.

 

Ta

 

Daz

[kenjennings]

Ditto what bob1200xl said.

 

Never had a real Atari model printer. I used a P:R: interface and a panasonic something or other model printer. I had a little BASIC program that printed text files and LISTed basic programs to the printer as graphics using the ROM font as the character set. Why-o-why did I give that printer away?

 

I do have an HP Laserjet 3 in storage... hmmmmm.

[Fred_M]

According to many websites (for example http://www.iowacomputing.com/commps801bla.html) the ribbons used for the commodore MPS801 and the Atari 1029 are the same. The company behind these printers (Seikosha) made a lot of printers for various home computer brands. I think you can find a ribbon easily if you search for a MPS801 ribbon.

[+Larry]

Let me make a "second" for the APE solution (or now also AspeQt). I've got a nice 24-pin Epson dot matrix, and haven't used it in years. The APE system is wonderfully flexible allowing you to print with your WinPrinter to several emulated devices. Here is the config screen for the APE printer. The APE "trial version" has more limited printing features, and the AspeQt is also more limited. I've run Win APE on a lowly Pentium 70 MHz laptop (Libretto). Probably will run on a 486. (?)

 

A really cool feature, I think is that you can print to another window on your PC display to "see" what you are printing with no paper use. I usually leave mine set to "Virtual Mx-80" using the graphics printer option. With this, APE will print most all Atari "special characters." Here is also a screen shot from my PC display showing a Basic program listing.

 

Of course, I don't get the sound effects and really slow output of the original dot matrix printers...

 

-Larry

 

 

@bob1200xl - That sounds really cool, thank you.

@David_P - I'm currently waiting for a SIO2PC usb from Sloopy and as i've never used one of these before it really sound interesting that i may be able to use this instead.

@Almost Rice - cool name by the way....Thank you for clearing that up as i wasn't sure if i was reading it correctly. I will buy a couple and do some printing old school too as i would like to see my 1029 spitting out paper again with the familiar rat a tat tat sound lol.

 

Thank you again to everyone. As always you've been an absolute wonderful fountain of Atari knowledge and now if have gone from no printing options to 3.

 

Ta

 

Daz

[dazpants1]

@Fred_M - I think i saw the same pages and tried to get hold of them but unfortunatley i couldn't find them easy either, but thank you for the info anyway

 

@Larry - When i get my SIO2PC - USB from Sloopy i will definatley give this a go but i think it's lost in the post somewhere as i've not yet got it. lol

 

Ta

 

Daz

[WizWor]

I had (still have, but do not use it) a 1027 back in the day. If was good enough to get me through college, but occasional misfeeds and access to consumables make me look at the APE devices. I used an Epson LQ510 24 pin dot matrix printer then an Epson Action Laser II printer with my Atari computers and later with DOS computers. I also messed with an Okimate 10 color thermal printer.

[dazpants1]

Hi,

 

Sorry for resurrecting this thread but i have just got hold of another 1029 printer which isn't working and was wondering if anyone knew if there was a field service manual for this that gave troubleshooting hints like the 1050 field service manual does?

 

I've googled but can't seem to see anything.

 

Ta

 

Daz

[atari8warez]

Let me make a "second" for the APE solution (or now also AspeQt). I've got a nice 24-pin Epson dot matrix, and haven't used it in years. The APE system is wonderfully flexible allowing you to print with your WinPrinter to several emulated devices. Here is the config screen for the APE printer. The APE "trial version" has more limited printing features, and the AspeQt is also more limited. I've run Win APE on a lowly Pentium 70 MHz laptop (Libretto). Probably will run on a 486. (?)

 

A really cool feature, I think is that you can print to another window on your PC display to "see" what you are printing with no paper use. I usually leave mine set to "Virtual Mx-80" using the graphics printer option. With this, APE will print most all Atari "special characters." Here is also a screen shot from my PC display showing a Basic program listing.

 

Of course, I don't get the sound effects and really slow output of the original dot matrix printers...

 

-Larry

 

Larry, can you elaborate on the printing limitations of AspeQt. How do you think that feature can be improved? I will be happy to add missing features to AspeQt.

[+Roydea6]

Larry, can you elaborate on the printing limitations of AspeQt. How do you think that feature can be improved? I will be happy to add missing features to AspeQt.

Now AspeQT print window has SELECT ALL and COPY ... If you could have a Save As .... and I don't where is saves as long as I can find it. It is a small pain to open my text editor to paste from CLIPBOARD and then Save as...

[atari8warez]

Now AspeQT print window has SELECT ALL and COPY ... If you could have a Save As .... and I don't where is saves as long as I can find it. It is a small pain to open my text editor to paste from CLIPBOARD and then Save as...

 

I am not sure which version of AspeQt you are using, but it has the SAVE option for quite some time now. It also has the ability to print to a PC printer, display the output in ATARI or PC fonts, strip line numbers from a listing (for cross compiling of Atari source files with line numbers) etc...

Edited January 6, 2013 by atari8warez

[Tickled_Pink]

Hi,

 

Sorry for resurrecting this thread but i have just got hold of another 1029 printer which isn't working and was wondering if anyone knew if there was a field service manual for this that gave troubleshooting hints like the 1050 field service manual does?

 

I've googled but can't seem to see anything.

 

Ta

 

Daz

I've got a pile of documentation on my hard drive but nothing for the 1029. Part of the reason might be that the 1029 was only released in Europe (although I think it may have also seen the light of day in Canada) and so any documentation on it would probably have come from Atari Ireland. So if they weren't in the Atari US warehouses when Best broke the door down, they wouldn't have it. And it might also make it more difficult to locate a service manual, if one existed at all.

 

Having said that, the 1029 (I have two myself - one boxed) was manufactured by Seikosha and the same printer was effectively manufactured for Tandy and Commodore, but with different case and I/O designs.

 

If you have problems finding suitable ribbons, have a look on eBay for the Commodore MPS-801 ribbons. They do come up from time to time in the UK.

 

I have the service manual for the Commodore MPS-801. As I said, the design is the same internally as the 1029 apparently. Unfortunately I don't know how to attach it to my post. Anyone?

[JohnBuell]

Click on "More Reply Options" then add the attachment.

[Tickled_Pink]

Click on "More Reply Options" then add the attachment.

Woohoo! Done.

MPS-801_Service_Manual_Preliminary_314003-004_1985_Jan.pdf

[dazpants1]

@Tickled_Pink - Thank you loads for this and it will help me to get inside the printers mind (not a place i would usually like to go lol).

 

Just goes to show once again that the Atari Age members are the best and a fountain of knowledge for all things Atari.

 

Thank you once again for all your help everyone.

 

Daz