There are command sequences for the printer to set italics, bold, NLQ, Big letters, underlined and so on..... ON or OFF.

Then wenn send text to the printer he formats it.

Or use a programm which converts the text to graphics and prints it as a graphic.
(C64 GEOS Geowrite)

Everything a normal printer would do. I printed certificates, banners and all sort of things on my 9 pin star lc-10 back in the day. but quality depended on the printer used. A 24 pin would print much smoother letters and graphics then a 9 pin printer. Problem with generic drivers is that they don't support every feature of the printer.

http://www.hanselman.com/blog/10AwesomeThings … tComputers.aspx

Why are you using a generic driver? Most dot matrix printers will print full graphics (pictures) albeit very slowly and loudly

Sammy wrote:

There are command sequences for the printer to set italics, bold, NLQ, Big letters, underlined and so on..... ON or OFF. […]
Show full quote

There are command sequences for the printer to set italics, bold, NLQ, Big letters, underlined and so on..... ON or OFF.

Then wenn send text to the printer he formats it.

Or use a programm which converts the text to graphics and prints it as a graphic.
(C64 GEOS Geowrite)

Yep. Different printer manufacturers had different languages for that, which is why you have to set the printer type in DOS software (like you select a sound card in games).

Printers usually have a set of fonts built-in which can also be set from software.

There's also a graphics mode that can print anything, but it's a lot slower.

As a tangent, remember when printers used to come with manuals the size of telephone directories, that used to tell you everything you could ever wish to know about the printer, including all of the command codes (often each single code had it's own page in the manual, describing what it did and how it could be combined with other codes)? This was in the early 80s, when people bought printers for use with eight bit computers, not just (the very early) PCs.

Printer manuals, like fax-machines, pagers, and game manuals*, seem to have gone the way of the Dodo.

And dot matrix printers were so noisy. Didn't someone once program a lot of dot matrix printers to perform a musical symphony, insofar as they could sound like that?

* Well, you do sometimes gets manuals with games nowadays. If you can call two pages warning about epilepsy, eight pages of adverts for the games company, two more pages about copyright, and a quarter of a page listing the joypad keys, a manual.

I got so disgusted with inkjets at one point I gave serious thought to rehabbing an old dot matrix printer I still had from an Apple. A cooler head prevailed and I bought a laserjet instead. Otherwise, I would have done it. Dot matrixes might be slow, but at least they work.

Sammy wrote:

Or use a programm which converts the text to graphics and prints it as a graphic.
(C64 GEOS Geowrite)

If you use ASCII though, the better dot-matrix printers can do 'NLQ': Near-letter quality.
They will do two or more passes over each line, with slightl displacements, to increase resolution. Even a 9-pin printer can get almost type-writer-like results like that.
I don't think this is possible when doing graphics, so you'd get lower resolution.

I had a 9 pin dot matrix printer a long time ago and it was indestructible. It was also very slow and noisy. I jumped on the laser wagon a long time ago and never regretted it. I remember to have used a program called Lettrix to emulate 24 pin quality. It was even slower but it showed. With Floyd-Steinberg or other error-diffusion techniques, you could print acceptable bitmaps.

Dot matrix printer did have its use that can't be replicated with other type of non-impact printer,
which is to print with its copy and not a reprint, using carbon-copy paper or 2/3-ply continous form papers.

Matrix printers continue to be widespread. Some examples: car repair shops, airports and car rental.

Ok let me say this another way... if I plug an Okidata 186 Turbo Microline into say the parallel port on my IBM PS/2 50z (Running DOS 5.0) and print from microsoft word 5.5 (or something like that) will I be able to print special text like italics, bold underline etc? I haven't gotten the chance to try it yet so I'm wondering if it's possible or will it just spit out plain text.

King_Corduroy wrote:

Ok let me say this another way... if I plug an Okidata 186 Turbo Microline into say the parallel port on my IBM PS/2 50z (Running DOS 5.0) and print from microsoft word 5.5 (or something like that) will I be able to print special text like italics, bold underline etc? I haven't gotten the chance to try it yet so I'm wondering if it's possible or will it just spit out plain text.

If Word 5.5 is anything like WordPerfect (and it should), you'll have to install drivers for each printer. Unless you have a driver, all it will print is plain text in a single font, otherwise it depends on the driver/printer.

alexanrs wrote:

If Word 5.5 is anything like WordPerfect (and it should), you'll have to install drivers for each printer. Unless you have a driver, all it will print is plain text in a single font, otherwise it depends on the driver/printer.

Yes, Word 5.5 needs drivers. My old HP Deskjet 520 had a floppy with drivers for Word.

Another way to get your printer working is looking for some compatibility option... most dot printers are (or can be configured to be) compatible with Epson or IBM models, so if you can't get drivers for Word 5.5 it may be easier install Epson/IBM drivers and then configure your printer to emulate one of those.

I remember we had an Epson dot matrix printer, and I could draw things in NeoPaint for DOS and print them out. The quality wasn't brilliant but the drawings were legible.

I think our LPT port must have shared an IRQ with our sound card as whenever we printed something, ugly static would come out the speakers. It never locked up or anything though.

Star-LC10 had buttons and stuff, for Italic, bold and so forth. This was way back in the 80's, when 9-Pin was "the shit" to own.
Later printers that I used, was when inkjet became avaliable to the publich. Uhh... LC-10 came as an colour printer too (LC-10c).

As software to print on dot matrix Epson LX-800, I use Print Master Plus 2.0.
Some site make a nostalgic review of this nice software: http://www.sydlexia.com/printmaster_plus_20.htm

Any of you guys have Commodore 64's and printers for them? I'm thinking about buying a good printer for my C64 and I'd like to know what happens when you print from Paperback writer 64 using the special formats like italics etc.

Joey_sw wrote:

Dot matrix printer did have its use that can't be replicated with other type of non-impact printer,
which is to print with its copy and not a reprint, using carbon-copy paper or 2/3-ply continous form papers.

Tax forms. 🙁 That's the primary reason why I keep a dot matrix printer in my office.

King_Corduroy wrote:

Any of you guys have Commodore 64's and printers for them? I'm thinking about buying a good printer for my C64 and I'd like to know what happens when you print from Paperback writer 64 using the special formats like italics etc.

As long as you have the right cable and driver, things should work.
I built a userport -> Centronics cable back in the day, and connected my HP Deskjet to my C64 with it.
In Geos I could use the LaserJet driver I believe (Deskjet was compatible with LaserJet), and then I could print anything, WYSIWYG.
I believe I've also used the Star LC10 with that cable at some point.
I'm not familiar with Paperback Writer 64, so I don't know what printers it supports and how (the userport is of course not the standard way of connecting a printer to a C64. Commodore originally used the serial port for that).