First post, by radiounix
Hey, so I bought this early Kodak Diconix 180Si Inkjet. While it uses an ink nozzle instead of impact pins, it seems like the entire engine is adapted from a 9 pin printer. Output has characteristic 9 pin dot formations in draft mode using its internal fonts. It's basically an IBM Thinkjet from the mid 80s, shrunk down and with a higher 192x192 graphics resolution.
What I didn't expect is the horrible dithering routines. Solidly defined printouts like Print Shop cards, vintage clip art and Paintbrush doodles reproduce quite nicely. Feed it an image and it comes out crudely bespeckled with dots and with minimal gradiation. Images are hardly recognizable. This is at 192x192 in Windows 3.11 with the official Diconix driver. I tried using Pro Printer emulation, same garbage.
Was there some hack to improve print quality back in the day? Like special pre-dithering processor tools, Output enhancement drivers for WIndows, .etc? Were 9 pin impact printers of the 80s just limited in this regard -- is this why pie charts, Printshop banners .etc of the day had a harsh pre-dithered look, sharp outlines and no gradiations?