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I love the sound of the Dot Matrix in the morning...


leech

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I was thinking about what was available in terms of color printing "back in the day".  Then I realized that there wasn't really any software on the A8 to drive the few color printers that existed.  I don't think Print Shop had any support for color printing - at least not on A8.  Does anyone have any examples of color print-capable software?

 

Edited by jamm
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2 minutes ago, jamm said:

I was thinking about what was available in terms of color printing "back in the day".  Then I realized that there wasn't really any software on the A8 to drive the few color printers that existed.  I don't think Print Shop had any support for color printing - at least not on A8.  Does anyone have any examples of color print-capable software?

 

Yeah, I think in general The Print Shop on 8bits didn't support color printing.  Though I'm not sure if maybe it was added in during one of the Companion or what not disks.  I think the GS version on Apple IIGS supports color.  I recently bought a Mac Powerbook 190cs and 5300c, one of which had a printshop floppy disk in there.  I wasn't aware it was released for the Mac.  I thought Broderbund kind of killed it off in favor of some other similar program during the 16 bit era.

 

I am looking for other printing software, was hoping Atari Artist or Koala pad or RAMbrandt or something would print and in color, but I haven't been able to find such things.

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The Companion just added additional fonts and borders.  Actually it modified the original PS disk to enable the additional fonts.  Very cool, however.  As for color, PS never supported color for the eights.  Not sure about other platforms.  It would be great NOT to have keep disk swapping (and wearing out the drive mech lever assy).  Okimate is the color printers I knew about for the Atari 8. Thermal printers maybe?  I know Atari had advertised a new color printer (again, thermal type), but dropped it before release.  Typical Atari marketing. 

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For dot matrix, you could get a (single) color printout by swapping in a color ribbon.

 

if color ribbons aren't available for your printer, then you have the Henry Ford model - you can have any color you like, as long as it's black!  ?

 

I wonder if you can wash the ink out of an old ribbon and then redye it with some color ink?  I know that my old Epson ribbon was more light grey than black.  Especially after so many WD40 treatments!  ?

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I can't think of any other color printer from that era other than the Okimate 10/20 (which, yes, used awful thermal-transfer printing) and, of course, the Atari 1020.   (And I'm not counting the ribbon swap method... ?)

 

Part of the reason I've been thinking about it is that it would be cool to add color printer emulation to FujiNet, but it's kind of pointless if there's no color printing software.  (The 1020 is already on the FujiNet to-do list.)

 

The Okimate must have come with some color printing software.  Does anyone have the software it came with, or know if it provided color drivers for any other applications?  (That last one seems pretty impossible, as the program would have to be capable of color printing in the first place in order to provide a color printer driver for it.)

 

The Apple ImageWriter II supported color printing from Apple II's and Macs -- that's the only other readily-available printer from the era I can think of.  Again, though, you'd need color-printing-capable software to make use of it.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by jamm
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I used to re-ink my dot matrix ribbons (much like I did with my typewriter before), but Henry Ford style.  It would not hurt to re-ink an old ribbon in a different colour for a two pass two tone output.  The ink would need to be oil based with a fine micron pigment and not acidic.

 

The lazy option is to go on ebay and search for typewriter ribbons, they are in various colours and are half an inch wide, so are compatible, you can splice the ends together and put them in an old ribbon.

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39 minutes ago, jamm said:

They were basically in every office BITD.  It wasn't until a few years later that HP decided top-notch quality wasn't that important...  ?

 

Much like everything else, you can make far more money creating throw away items than you can making something that lasts forever.  As long as all of your competition is in on it.

 

Perfect exapmle of this is phones.  Dies everyone need the new phone every year?  Absolutely not.  But if you don't buy a new one every 2 or 3 years?  You will stop getting uldates, and it will magically keep getting slower and slower...

 

Even my Citizen printer still works after all this time, and yet I have gone through many inkjets because either you can't buy new ink cartridges anymore, or it is chealer to buy a new printer than it is to buy ink!

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You are pointing out an area that the 8 bit could use some help with, software with color printing supported a an advantage... while I am sure there may be work a work around or two that let's you send commands to the printer and change to a specific color... it would be nice to have such things natively supported... perhaps newsroom with color pictures inserted etc..... imagine a last word color :)   that sort thing, print shop even.

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18 hours ago, leech said:

Yeah, I think in general The Print Shop on 8bits didn't support color printing.  Though I'm not sure if maybe it was added in during one of the Companion or what not disks.  I think the GS version on Apple IIGS supports color.  I recently bought a Mac Powerbook 190cs and 5300c, one of which had a printshop floppy disk in there.  I wasn't aware it was released for the Mac.  I thought Broderbund kind of killed it off in favor of some other similar program during the 16 bit era.

 

I am looking for other printing software, was hoping Atari Artist or Koala pad or RAMbrandt or something would print and in color, but I haven't been able to find such things.

There are PD programs to print color screen dumps on the 1020. Obviously limited too RGB and black (and mixed color with patterns) of the 1020, unless you refill the pens with other colors. Didn't the Okimate printers come with color screen-dump software? I bet that software could be adapted to modern printers.

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I ran a panasonic KXP with color kit and a tandy color dot matrix....there was also at one time different color ribbons for the XMM801, but they were literally you pulling the thing out and putting the other in, the whole print was a single color... the talk was running a picture through print three times using the RGB filter pictures from computer eyes video digitizer output..

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Here's someone creating some impressive art on an Imagewriter II, but it's being controlled by a Mac LC III.

https://www.journaldulapin.com/2016/05/05/image-writer-couleur/

 

There was a separate version of The Print Shop that was released for the Apple II that specifically supports color printing via the Imagewriter II.

https://archive.org/details/wozaday_The_Print_Shop_Color

 

Here's some printing from an Apple II using that version:

 

 

Screen Shot 2020-06-01 at 8.26.52 AM.png

Edited by jamm
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port port port port

6 minutes ago, jamm said:

Here's someone creating some impressive art on an Imagewriter II, but it's being controlled by a Mac LC III.

https://www.journaldulapin.com/2016/05/05/image-writer-couleur/

 

There was a separate version of The Print Shop that was released for the Apple II that specifically supports color printing via the Imagewriter II.

https://archive.org/details/wozaday_The_Print_Shop_Color

 

Here's some printing from an Apple II using that version:

 

 

Screen Shot 2020-06-01 at 8.26.52 AM.png

port port port port   :)

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6 minutes ago, _The Doctor__ said:

port port port port

port port port port   :)

Yeah, I had the same thought - it should be too tough to port, but it'd definitely take someone with some Atari assembler skills.

 

Meanwhile, here's the Okimate 10 software disk for the Atari:

 

s-l1600.jpg

 

Someone needs to get that in the software archive.  Of course, it's an eBay listing that's asking for a lot ($30) just for the disk. 

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25 minutes ago, jamm said:

Anyone who's been dying to have the Okimate 10 experience -- there's a NIB unit on eBay for $75.  ?

Ha, I was about to buy one until people said they sucked.  If I know my 1050s were perfect, I would but the thing and image the disk.  Though the 1050 did load up Eidelon last I tried.

 

I would like to see the Apple IIGS Printshop ported to VBXE/Rapidus.

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4 minutes ago, BillC said:

I found it at Staples and Amazon, search for "9.5x11 paper" 

Yeah, I got some 8.5x11 on Amazon, 1000 sheets for 25.  Unfortunately I have only found a place that sells a color ink ribbon for my printer that is 14 per... with a minimum order of 100...

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