Mark Woodmass <
enormous.member100@googlemail.com> wrote in news:
2cf54a78-215f-491b-9526-90c9ef0053f7n@googlegroups.com:
On Saturday, 22 August 2020 at 20:59:29 UTC+1, Maz. wrote:
Zx Printer is bullshit!
My mate had an Alphacom 32. That wasn't great either :p
In my many, many years of computing, I've yet to have a printer that I'm
100% happy with. Granted, I never had one for the spectrum, not seeing
the need for one, as all ir was used for was games, but yes, I'm quite
sure, there'd be a lot of 4-letter words thrown around if I did have one
My first one was a Panasonic KX-P2123. Originally purchased in the mid
90s for me to do homeworks on, I pretty much used the entire ribbon to
print Speccy screenshots (oooh, on topic!), and maybe used it once or
twice for its intended purpose of homework.
It was always constantly jamming if you used the tractor feed paper, and
always misaligning if you used A4, and as everything was done on a
budget in our house, the colour ribbons we got were shockingly bad.
Then, one day, a friend of my dad's, a lorry driver, came over with a
floppy disk and his route for the next working day. I went to switch on
the printer, aaaaaaaaand nothing. Not a sausage. No head moving, no
LEDS, just stone cold dead.
Usual troubleshooting of cable swapping etc. proved fruitless, so I took
it into the back garden and gave it a damn good smashing with a brick.
If I could go back to my 15 year old self, I'd plead to not smash
anything up just because of what may have been a simple fix.
Since then, I've had successions of inkjet and laser printers, all built
down to a price. They barely last one ink cartidge change before they
start jamming up and the print quality suffers immeasurably.
So yes, although I never used one, I'm sure that the original ZX printer
did indeed have its flaws, but I'm sure that if it wasn't for this bit
of kit, we'd have far less listings in magazines and the like, so I, for
one, dip my hat to the humble silver bog-rolled monstrousity.
--
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https://www.mercuryvapour.co.uk
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