hi-res scan of Atari 825 printer print sample needed

[santoscork]

Hello

 

Could someone with an Atari 825 printer, please print a sample of all its available characters to paper, flatbed scan the output to a TIFF at 1200ppi and then email me the resulting scan.
I spent about an hour trying to find something suitable and have not been able to.

 

I did find a sample but the scan makes it difficult to get a clear understanding of the grid that the dots are imposed on.

 

The reason for this request is so that I can go about recreating all the APX games manual in full vector (resolution independent) glory. If all goes well I should be able to create an Atari 825 TrueType fonts set as well and come back with links to the same.

 

If you have an Atari 825 printer and are able to output the fill character set in all the available character styles I would appreciate it very much. You can send me the scan to santoscork@outlook.com or go wetransfer.com, drag and drop the file into the page and enter my email as the recipient.

 

I did find a sample on AtariMagazines.com but the resolution is somewhat insufficient for the intended purpose. I really appreciate anyone who can help with this effort.

 

 

[6BQ5]

I don’t have an 825 printer but wanted to offer you moral support here. Excellent project!!

[santoscork]

I don’t have an 825 printer but wanted to offer you moral support here. Excellent project!!

 

Thanks. I came to the realization that the 825 (this is probably old news) is actually a Centronics 737. If I can find out what the table layout (grid) used for the dots to impact on I should be able to do this without too much fuss. I actually have to go about creating the fonts first so that I can get this done in Illustrator. I know that foiks here don't care about Macs (maybe they do but no officially) — I have been recreating every Apple CD/DVD in Illustrator, I am about half way through the 800 or so discs but will only publish when they are complete. I am also working on recreating some of the mame art work. I love doing this stuff and always loved Atari (I grew up with it).

 

The nice thing about the APX titles is that they have very simple but beautiful front covers while the rest of the manual looks like an Atari 825 (Centronics 737) printout so I will have to create the font first. Everything will be shared freely.

 

I once owned an 825, it was a really heavy printer as I remember it - so yes it has a very special place in my heart.

Edited January 24, 2019 by santoscork

[Bill Lange]

I have an 825. I'll see if I can recreate the print samples for you.

[santoscork]

I have an 825. I'll see if I can recreate the print samples for you.

 

Wonderful. In the meantime I did find some info over on Atarimania. If you can print a line across the entire width of the page and measure it in centimeters or inches (depending on your geo) as close as you can from end to end. This will help me gauge accuracy. I would like to make this the project as accurate as possible. I seincerely appreciate it. I do know that the 825 does 80 characters at 10 cpi; 132 characters at 16.7 cpi so I should be able to do the math on the printable width once I know the matrix size for each character.

 

Could also print a character that consumes the entire space, something like a cursor or a character that essentially consumes it's entire character width and height. This will help me really know what the matrix (dots width by dots height) that a single monospace default character can hold — meaning I will know what the box size is to hold a character and how many dots across by how many dots tall a default character can consumer.

 

- Dot matrix impact printer

- 3 character sets:

monospaced 7x8 dot matrix at 10 cpi (default)

monospaced condensed at 16.7 cpi

proportionately spaced Nx9 dot matrix at avg of 14 cpi (N=6..18)

- Each character set with 96 standard ASCII characters

- All characters can be elongated (printer double width)

- Characters per line: 80 at 10 cpi; 132 at 16.7 cpi

- Speed: 50 cps at 10 cpi; 83 cps at 16.7 cpi; 79 cps avg. proportional

- Print buffer: 1200 dot columns

- Controls along bottom of front of printer, left to right:

- Online/Local

- Paper Rev<->Fwd

- Power Off On

- Paper: roll, fanfold, or cut sheets

- Connectivity: 40 pin PCB edge. Pinout:

40

 

Thanks again!

Edited January 24, 2019 by santoscork

[santoscork]

I have an 825. I'll see if I can recreate the print samples for you.

 

Could you report back with a reply once you've sent the email.

 

Thanks

—Alex

[Bill Lange]

Sure can. I'll get to this on Saturday.

[Bill Lange]

Test print attached. Let me know how this looks. I'll print another sheet with what you requested.

 

 

825-1200dpi-75-bright-test1.pdf

[santoscork]

26 people got to this before I did that's alway a clear sign that I am a little getting back to you. Thanks for sending this.

 

This resolution appears to be reasonably good and the bit depth is fine. It was mostly to get the grid that the matrix uses to lay down the impact points.

 

It's interesting that there is an overlap impact point, as though there are two grids.

 

 

It leaves me wondering what bold looks like, I suspect it is a double composite of a character with an offset. For example, the 825 print's the a character twice over top itself with a slight offset.

 

Thanks again for the initial test scan!

[santoscork]

Test print attached. Let me know how this looks. I'll print another sheet with what you requested.

 

 

I am doing further research into the 825 and dot-matrix in general. @Dragonstomper if you could send me a further print with the other characters it could be helpul

[santoscork]

Test print attached. Let me know how this looks. I'll print another sheet with what you requested.

 

 

 

 

Test print attached. Let me know how this looks. I'll print another sheet with what you requested.

 

 

 

Dear Bill Lange

 

I have found time to continue the project. I am currently working on the elongated character set. I noticed a gap between the lower case g and q there are some characters missing.

 

These missing characters are the following lowercase alphanumerics

h i j k l m n o p

 

For this first issue, if I could ask you to kindly print these missing elongated characters with a line of uppercase characters on the line above like your first scan. This helps me register the character correctly. I would be grateful if you could print this and because the elongated character set lies on a very deterministic grid a 600dpi or 900dpi scan would present enough detail for reproduction.

 

 

---

 

I will need more help to get other characters so I need some BASIC programming language expert with an Atari 825 and the Atari 825 Printer Operator's manual. I pasted a link here. On Page 17 onward there are examples of how to generate other character types.

 

 

 

 

 

Additional to this, I also discovered that on page 64 of the Atari Word Processor References Manual at https://atariwiki.org/wiki/attach/Atari%20Word%20Processor/Atari%20Word%20Processor%20CX404-Reference%20Manual-Screen.pdfadditional characters are available. It's unclear to me at this time if these additional character sets are a result of features exclusive to the Atari Word Processor program or if they are available only when using one of the other Atari branded printers. The manual refers to these characters set as Print Types. In any event, scans of these additional Print Types would help me create a very complete fonts set for the community. The fonts will be released under Creative Commons Zero.

 

 

Interestingly, characters are omitted from this image which is from the manual.

 

 

Unfortunately there is more. I found an Atari 825 printer brochure and they have a sample print which only shows that I am missing a few more characters.

 

 

This is very preliminary

 

10 LPRINT" Atari 825 PRINTER QUICK CHECK"

20 LPRINT

30 LPRINT

40 LPRINT "!"#$%&'()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>?@AABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\]_`aabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz123{|}~"

75 REM ***ATARI 825 FLYER SAMPLE PRINTOUT***

80 LPRINT "!"#$%&'()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>?"

90 LPRINT "@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\]^_"

100 LPRINT "`abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz{|}~"

I am not sure but perhaps line 40 will generate an error because ascii 34 is a double quote.

Atari 825 owner's manual, http://ftp.pigwa.net/stuff/collections/Atari%20documents/Manuals/Atari%20825%20Printer%20Operators%20manual.pdf finally! I likely have this offline because I actaully mirrored pigwa a while ago.

Edited May 15, 2019 by santoscork

[JoSch]

Would you mind, if I used your font with RespeQt?

[santoscork]

Would you mind, if I used your font with RespeQt?

 

You can use the font in any way you see fit as long as it is not sold. Mind you the font is not ready yet as there are glyphs missing in the original scan for me to recreate.

[santoscork]

Here is the process of drawing a character with an underline.

 

drawing z.mov

Edited May 16, 2019 by santoscork

[santoscork]

For the Elongated Type Face, I am missing scans of these ascii characters.

 

[ \ ] _ ` { | } ~ h i j k l m n o p " + , - . / : ; = > ?

 

I need someone to scan these please.

 

If you want to participate with a scan please include above the print upper case elongated Z so that I can determine where these missing characters sit within the array of dots that make up the dot matrix characters. So in one line the missing characters and in a line above I need as many elongated Z's as there are missing characters.

 

I would be grateful.

[JoSch]

 

You can use the font in any way you see fit as long as it is not sold. Mind you the font is not ready yet as there are glyphs missing in the original scan for me to recreate.

Yes, I know. But it would be really great. We already have an 1020 font, so I would want to have yours, too

Would CC BY-NC-ND (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) suit you as a license?

[Mr Robot]

He's already said the licence will be CC0

 

https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/cc0/

 

I'm a little confused by a later statement that "You can use the font in any way you see fit as long as it is not sold." as this isn't compatible with CC0

Edited May 16, 2019 by Mr Robot

[santoscork]

He's already said the licence will be CC0

 

https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/cc0/

 

I'm a little confused by a later statement that "You can use the font in any way you see fit as long as it is not sold." as this isn't compatible with CC0

 

Yes, it is incompatible.

 

I will review the licenses out there and apply one that allows for free use, free download, derivative works but prohibits the font itself from being sold as an digital download. I don't mind the font used for a commercial works.

 

Thank you for raising the question. I appreciate the opportunity to clarify and I apologize if I was not clear.

Edited May 16, 2019 by santoscork

[Bill Lange]

If I don't get to this tonight, I will not get to it until after Memorial Day weekend (May 27th) as I'm about to hit the road for work. Sorry for the delay.

[JoSch]

 

Yes, it is incompatible.

 

I will review the licenses out there and apply one that allows for free use, free download, derivative works but prohibits the font itself from being sold as an digital download. I don't mind the font used for a commercial works.

 

Thank you for raising the question. I appreciate the opportunity to clarify and I apologize if I was not clear.

It's totally OK. I was only making a suggestion.

It's your work, you call the shots.

[Mr Robot]

 

Yes, it is incompatible.

 

I will review the licenses out there and apply one that allows for free use, free download, derivative works but prohibits the font itself from being sold as an digital download. I don't mind the font used for a commercial works.

 

Thank you for raising the question. I appreciate the opportunity to clarify and I apologize if I was not clear.

 

 

The 'usual' open font licence is SIL

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIL_Open_Font_License

 

But that allows commercial use (with a few restrictions)

 

If you don't want any commercial use CC-NC is for you, if you want attribution "CC-NC-BY", but these are not free culture licences, it's something I struggled with myself, allowing people to potentially make a profit off of something I'd given away irked me greatly.

 

In the end I realised I was never going to be able to enforce any licence I granted; assholes will be assholes, and if someone used my stuff without credit (happens all the time) or took my stuff and made a profit from it (happens all the time) there was nothing I could do about it other than calling them out. In the end I went with SIL for my fonts and CC0 for everything else and I put a note on the website and docs that a credit/linkback would be nice. Now I don't worry about people making money off the things I do for fun and I get a good feeling when someone says thanks. I still wish more people had the good manners to say thanks or give credit, especially if they actually make money out of the use, it doesn't cost them anything but it rarely happens.

Edited May 16, 2019 by Mr Robot

[santoscork]

The license is not enforceable AFAIK, it's something that I think others should respect as a courtesy.

 

Thanks for the remarks and suggestions.

[JoSch]

The license is not enforceable AFAIK, it's something that I think others should respect as a courtesy.

 

Thanks for the remarks and suggestions.

Which license do you mean? CC? In the german Wikipedia, it's stated, that a US court decided, that a free license can be enforced by copyright law.

[santoscork]

It's totally OK. I was only making a suggestion.

It's your work, you call the shots.

You are more than welcome and I invite you to make any suggestions, big or small.

[chad5200]

I can offer print samples from a 1025 printer if needed.