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Commodore MPS 1230 Dot Matrix Printer under GNU/Linux



 
 
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  #1  
Old May 26th 18, 10:20 AM posted to comp.periphs.printers
Anonymous
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Posts: 1
Default Commodore MPS 1230 Dot Matrix Printer under GNU/Linux

Hi,

I used to have a Commodore 64 with an MPS 1230 printer. 25 years later
the printer is still working, and I wondered whether it could work with
a modern GNU/Linux distribution, Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Bionic Beaver amd64 in
this case. Long story short, with the right settings it works perfectly!

So I wanted to share my experience, hoping it would be useful to those
who still have this printer. Note that you will probably need a USB to
Parallel port adapter and the computer won’t recognize automagically the
printer.

Firstly, plug your printer to the appropriate port (in my case, a USB
port through the Parallel adapter) and go to the control center of your
computer then choose to add a printer (System Administration
Printers with the MATE desktop). Select "unknown" and click Forward,
then keep the default option (choose a printer from the database) and
select IBM and click Forward. A list will be displayed, there select
ProPrinterII, then click Forward and after setting the name, click
Apply. You’re done with the settings on the computer.

Secondly, press and hold Line Feed and Form Feed on the MPS 1230 and
turn it on. The machine will enter the configuration mode and ask you a
bunch of questions. As it says, press LF to confirm a choice, FF to
change and to end press Local. Here are the settings I chose to get
everything working:

Interface: Parallel
Printer emulated in Parallel and serial Commodo Proprinter
Character set in parallel mode: USA/UK
Character set in Commodore mode: USA/UK
Open Mode: 4 P.C. Commands, 5 Commodore Commands
Automatic Sheet Feeder: Yes
Double Strike Printing: Bidirectional
Character Resolution: Draft
Character Spacing: 10
Enable D.L.L. : No
Line Feed: LF = LF
Carriage Return: CR = CR
Paper end detection: Yes
Line Spacing: 1/6
Slashed Zero: Yes
DC1/DC3 Procedu No
Form Length: 10
Skip Over Perforation (BOF): 0
Bidirectional B.I.M. : Yes
Proportional Spacing: No
Character Length: 8 bits

Would you like to store these parameters?
Yes

Changes Executed

You may find more information in the user manual of the printer, and
some of the settings above probably won’t interfere much, like the
slashed 0 or the character set as foomatic will handle the charset and
all the rest. But just in case, I wrote down the entire configuration (I
have to fiddle a bit to filter out useless settings, but that’s for
later). Now your printer should be ready to print whatever you like, you
can start with a test page.

As for the supplies, 11*24 cm fan fold or continuous form paper is easy
to find, and for the ink ribbon it seems that the Olivetti 82556 Nylon
black does the trick, but I have yet to try it as a replacement of the
original ribbon.

Well, that’s it. Hope this will be useful to others. Needless to say
feel free to correct my mistakes.

Message licensed under Creative Commons Zero.
  #2  
Old May 26th 18, 10:43 PM posted to comp.periphs.printers
Eli the Bearded
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Posts: 15
Default Commodore MPS 1230 Dot Matrix Printer under GNU/Linux

In comp.periphs.printers, Anonymous wrote:
I used to have a Commodore 64 with an MPS 1230 printer. 25 years later
the printer is still working, and I wondered whether it could work with
a modern GNU/Linux distribution, Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Bionic Beaver amd64 in
this case. Long story short, with the right settings it works perfectly!


Twenty-five years later? Are your sure you don't mean thirty-five?

As for the supplies, 11*24 cm fan fold or continuous form paper is easy
to find, and for the ink ribbon it seems that the Olivetti 82556 Nylon


I must confess, I have not seen fan-fold paper in a long time. Your idea
of "easy to find" might be different than mine. But just the other day I
was looking at a store window display where the shop keeper had printed
single letter per page sheets and taped them to the window and thought
how this is such a step backwards from fan-fold printed banners.

Well, that’s it. Hope this will be useful to others. Needless to say
feel free to correct my mistakes.


I'm glad someone is doing this, but it isn't the project for me. Thanks
for the post, I enjoyed reading it.

Elijah
------
buys cartons of paper for his laser printer regularly
  #3  
Old May 27th 18, 08:09 PM posted to comp.periphs.printers
Moe Trin[_2_]
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Posts: 6
Default Commodore MPS 1230 Dot Matrix Printer under GNU/Linux

On Sat, 26 May 2018, in the Usenet newsgroup comp.periphs.printers,
in article , Eli the Bearded wrote:

Anonymous wrote:


I used to have a Commodore 64 with an MPS 1230 printer. 25
years later the printer is still working,


Twenty-five years later? Are your sure you don't mean thirty-five?


Agree - but you have to remember that (comparatively speaking)
most dot-matrix printers were built like battle tanks. My
25 year-old HP LJ-5 still works, though it generates a lot of
heat when running, and I am down to one computer that still
has an IEEE-488 parallel port. We also buried the Epsom
LQ-1000 and FX-850 about two years ago for that same reason
(plus they were S L O W and very noisy). They were still
working at age 30.

As for the supplies, 11*24 cm fan fold


Unusual size - I'm used to 8.5 x 11 inch = 21.6 x 28 cm (~9
inch/23 cm if you count the tear-off perforations)

I must confess, I have not seen fan-fold paper in a long time.


Stick the keywords "fanfold paper" into your favorite search
engine, and you'll find it easy enough. Spamazon is selling
9x11 in thousand sheet boxes for under US$20. I haven't looked
for it recently, but Staples and Office-Depot have it on their
web-sites. I still have about a box and a half of 8x11 as
well as a quarter box of 13x11 for the LQ-1000. The bigger
problem for me was finding ribbons - though again, they are
available on-line. In the mid-1980s, I bought a "re-inker"
(essentially a tank that re-applied ink to the ribbons as
you cranked the ribbon back and forth. Worked well, but
finding suitable ink today is a problem.

Old guy
 




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