[sounds of intro]
*EFFORT SOUND*
So I watch a lot of YouTubers.
A lot of American YouTubers.
And the contrast between what I do and what American YouTubers do is quite profound.....
apart from this.
Thank you to Squarespace for sponsoring this video.
They'll be showing off, you know, iPhone, what are we up to now?
Six?
Seven?
Something like that, or MacBook airs.
And I'm sitting here introducing an brand new dot matrix printer, which I bought.
Yep.
I mean, imagine if this was an American YouTube channel....
Yo, yo, yo, what is happening, people?
It's your boy nerd here.
And I'm bringing to you the Epson dot matrix LX-350... (trails off)
This is an Epson LX-350.
You know, the fact they're still making dot matrix printers and the fact that you can
plug them into USB is something that needs to be explored.
Oh my God.
OK, so this actually came from Amazon.
It is brand new, but it was an Amazon warehouse purchase, so it's been bought by someone else
and returned, which made it a lot cheaper.
But it's still a brand new printer.
Look at it.
Alright, let's get this set up and sort it out.
So, what do I have here?
Well the box will tell you that it's a fast and durable Epson 9pin narrow carriage impact
printer.
Look at all these things it has to offer.
Interestingly, it doesn't mention cost saving, and that's really the biggest appeal of a
dot matrix in our modern times.
Inkjets ink dries up quickly.
Laser jet toner is expensive, but a dot matrix ribbon.
Well, it's cheap as chips.
£12.85 on Amazon, and that will give you a WHOPPING 4 million characters.
Nice.
So, before we get into it.
How does a Dot Matrix work?
How does it achieve such economies.
Well, you can get a dot matrix printer in various forms, colour, monochrome, 24 pin,
9 pin.
This is a monochrome 9 pin model.
What that means is the print head is literally made up of a matrix or row of 9 pins.
The print head then scrolls from left to right across a piece of paper, and as it goes, uses
a solenoid to impact these pins onto the ink ribbon, which in turn presses against the
paper and creates an image.
By varying the amount of pins impacting at a time, the image will slowly be created,
line by line.
This violent approach to printing, is why dot matrix printers make so much noise, it's
also why they tend to suffer in image quality, as the definition of the image is entirely
dictated by the pins.
A 24 pin printer will be able to create a finer image, simply because it has more pins
to play with.
A colour dot matrix will tend to use a ribbon containing primary ink colours, and the print
head will impact each colour onto a desired point by moving the ribbon vertically, and
then varying the strength of each impact.
This will then allow colour mixing to create the required result.
But a colour dot matrix is a very rare breed today.
Most modern dot matrix printers are designed to produce reams of output as cheaply as possible,
or to print documents requiring carbon copies, as their impacting nature allows.
And so we have our Epson 9pin LX-350.
Installation of the ribbon is incredibly easy, simply remove the clear panel, and slip it
in, making sure you get the ribbon inbetween the print head and the page guide.
Connection is also as painless.
Underneath we have not only modern day USB 2.0, but also a Centronics parallel port AND
a 232 serial port, so you can hook this baby up to an older machine.
But let's begin with a Windows 10 printer test page.
Well that seems reasonable enough.
This printer doesn't produce anywhere near the quality of a decent 80s or 90s dot matrix.
It's not intended to.
It's for efficient business use.
It's always amusing reading some of the reviews on T'INTERNET where people clearly bought
this as their main standard printer.
WORST PURCHASE EVER....
HORRIBLE....
Do not feed properly....
CHEWS PAPER.....
THIS PRINTER DOES A TERRIBLE JOB HALF THE TIME, I CAN'T READ THE NUMBERS AND IT ISN'T
THE RIBBON....
Great for Documents; Lousy for Web Pages and Forms.....
NOT COMPATIBLE WITH WINDOWS 10.....
Thankfully, others seem to get it...
For Text Print....
Works with pre 1990's PC to print off old parts info.... amasing, really good not bad
it was a good printer you should buy it.
Great!
It is not noisy at all.
*FURIOUSLY LOUD DOT MATRIX SOUNDS*
But let's cut the crap here.
One of the main reasons I bought this this isn't so I can feed single sheets into it,
one at a time and then get a very mediocre output.
No, I bought this so that I could line up some traction, or continuous feed paper, and
print off massive banners.
Like people used to do.
Come on, you must have been to a party where someone had reamed off a happy birthday message
on this paper and slung it on the wall?
Well if you didn't, prepare to be amazed.
Just like you will be with my sponsor, SquareSpace.
Imagine.
You could get your banner printing business up and running in minutes.
Pick a website template, slam a website together with ease, choose a domain name, and you're
good to go.
Of course, you don't necessarily have to be running a banner printing business.
Just an idea.
But whatever it is, SquareSpace are offering 10% off your first purchase of a website or
domain, by following the link below.
Dot matrix printer not included.
Ok, let's get cracking.
First, we'll need some software to do the task.
Back in the day, this would usually have been BroderBund's Print Shop.
It just so happens that they still make a version for Windows 10.
In fact they make several versions.
So we've got The Print Shop Deluxe 6.0 for $49.99 OR The Print Shop 23.1 Deluxe for $69.99.
WHAT.
It turns out that Broderbund actually created a new version from 2010 onwards, designed
for Windows 7 and published by Encore.
However, they kept the original interface version going, with updates to make it compatible
also.
So, we've got a new snazzy version, or the tried and tested version.
I think I'll go for 23.1.
Especially with those clip art numbers.
Over a quarter of a million.
Thank you very much.
I'm not going to give you a review of this software.
We're here to get a job done now.
So let's get it done.
Ohhh yeah, we are rocking now, Printshop!
Bannners!
Custom, QuickStart Layouts, let's try that.
Oh, look, we've got all these banners to choose from jobs, job fairs, sign ups, Skyline Company.
You've done it.
Let's let let me try, Car Wash donation only.
Oh, come on, DISK?!
I do not have it.
You should have mapped this yourself.
OK, I'm just going to try and create custom one, because for some reason it was not letting
me.
*printer sounds*
Ho,hoooooo
Banner printing still works, kind of.
There's a massive gap in between the "N", but that's OK, because it still kind of almost
works.
OK, so I wonder how wide I can make this, does it just keep expanding?
Oh, I can make the biggest banner in the world!
So for anyone who doesn't know, I share an office with Stuart Ashen, a.k.a. Ashens!
Hello.
His office is up there.
Mine is down there.
So I'm going to put the banner down here in front of his door, down the stairs for a nice
little greeting from when he next comes in the office.
That will be nice.
Stuart Ashen.
Welcome to your office.
Hello.
Oh oh oh oh, 80s, 80s stock crash.
All right, let's put down the banner.
Everyone has to have his 80s stock crash image, yes, and then we'll have some some more 80s
stuff at the end.
1980 primo wine.
Yes, perfect.
LET'S PRINT!
ok, so whilst that's printing, which incidentally takes 11 and a half minutes, I want to mention
one of my favourite parts of continuous feed paper, and that's the method by which the
printer pulls it through.
Rather than relying on a rubber roller and friction, you get these little adjustable
sprockets which sit in the paper holes and rotate feeding the paper through.
Of course, you just have to be careful the paper doesn't fall back on itself and get
dragged through again.
Anyway, here's the end result, and yes, we've still got those spacing issues.
I tried a few things, paper sizes, etc, but there's clearly some kind of deeper issue
here.
I had some issues printing true type fonts earlier as well.
But for today's exercise this will do fine.
Anyway, I left the banner and went home.
The next day, this was Stuart's response;
Peter, really?
what the hell is this?
Dot matrix!?
You know, I only accept Daisy wheel prints!
So there we go, another verdict to add onto Google Reviews.
Anyway that brings these proceedings to a close
This is the end of whatever this video became.
It started off looking at the dot matrix printer and we then did with banners.
So thanks for watching.
Have a great evening.