https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPz8BHWP-0o
It's a little compressed pre-inked ribbon you just drop in to the cartridge and open up and thread through.
Looks like a heck of a way to get an old dot matrix printer ribbon printing good again, but I don't see these anywhere...
Yes. Back in the day (2000s), these exotic kind of things were still sold in stationary shops.
They had material for school kids, crayons, pens, pencils, all sorts of papers and cardboard etc.
But also thermal paper for fax machines, electric calculators, vintage cash registers, ribbons for mechanical/electric typewriters ..and cartridges for matrix printers.
"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel
//My video channel//
Can't you buy a new cartridge for you printer? They are still being sold, at least for the common models.
I remember that on some Youtube channel (Adrian's digital basement? 8 Bit guy? Tech tangents? Some other?) I've heard that you can refresh the cartridge with WD40 (of course, with what else? 😁 ). But don't blame me if it doesn't work.
HanSolo wrote on 2023-09-06, 08:17:Can't you buy a new cartridge for you printer? They are still being sold, at least for the common models.
I remember that on some Youtube channel (Adrian's digital basement? 8 Bit guy? Tech tangents? Some other?) I've heard that you can refresh the cartridge with WD40 (of course, with what else? 😁 ). But don't blame me if it doesn't work.
I've picked up a few cartridges and all seem very dried up and print OK but pretty faintly. Perhaps amazon and ebay aren't the best places to look.
I actually just tinkered around and 3d-printed a custom design to use a piece of foam and an stamp pad re-inker to re-ink my existing ribbons.
I actually contemplated purchasing a new ribbon for a different printer (.5" width) and winding it back into the old cartridge but I can't imagine how I'd get it all back into the cartridge properly...
New cartridges are dry? I thought they are still being produces because dot matriox printers are sill in use today.
The two I bought from different sources for this printer are very faint. I'll try one from a reputable ink/toner vendor tho...
OK so I actually just realized that Epson makes brand new dot matrix printers with WIndows 11 drivers, USB ports, AND standard parallel port connectors for fairly cheap.
Picked one up to use as a retro printer AND to annoy the family with by printing out everything on it from my Windows 11 laptop. I also ordered a Retroprinter device to use for non-Epson retro printouts redirected to my Epson ecotank printer...
I'll track down a handful of better ribbons for the 24-pin Epson ActionPrinter 3000 I was given and just live in Epson printing paradise.
