Firstly
I would like to say that the appearance of this printer says a lot
for Atari, it seems that they do listen to us. Just a few months ago
people were saying 'Yes but now the ST range is out, Atari, and just
about everyone else has abandoned the 8-bit users' and when the ST
range appeared I must admit that I thought the same. But no, Atari
have proved us all wrong and the appearance of this particularly
good printer will hopefully herald Atari's commitment to the 8-bit
range.
Until now, all the Atari printers have been rough
and ready affairs so what would make you go out and buy another one?
Let's first take a look at the other printers still available from
Atari and then go on to discuss the virtues of the XMM801.
The 1029 looks and behaves too much like the
Commodore MPS801 for my liking, in fact it is, together with an
Amstrad model, the same design with the software inside the printer
altered to suit. It can do screen dumps, with the right software, it
is compact and functional and, although the print quality isn't
great, it's okay if you use a new ribbon every 20 or 30 pages. It is
however fairly old technology and its main advantage is the price of
around £119 or less which is excellent for any dot matrix printer.
The 1029 will still suit youngsters who want to use it for screen
dumps and those who want program listings and are not too worried
about the overall look of any text processing they do.
As for the 1027, well how Atari got themselves
mixed up in this I don't know. It works okay, if you use fairly
heavy paper (I use 80 gram photocopy paper) and you may even get
your print in fairly straight lines most of the time!. It is my firm
belief that Atari should have concentrated on replacing this, rather
than the 1029 because, although the XMM801 is a fine printer is is
not a Letter Quality printer. I suppose though that the one thing in
the 1027's favour is its price as no other true Letter Quality
printer comes remotely near the price.
So on to the XMM801 which is a beautifully
designed and crafted machine. It matches the 130XE perfectly, being
the same shade of grey over its main body with a black translucent
cover. The cover is, unfortunately, quite difficult to see through
so you may remove it if you wish as the printer is fairly quiet
anyway. Do remember to replace it after use though as it is
primarily a dust cover for the delicate machinery inside.
There are a set of 3 keys and 3 LED's on the top
in the right hand corner which are, from back to front, Power, No
Paper and On Line. In front of the On Line lamp is a key which acts
as a toggle between on and off line with the LED glowing when the
printer is ready. There are Line Feed and Form Feed keys in front
which are disabled when the machine is On Line. The dimensions of
the printer are 4½ inches (113mm) high by 15½ - inches (394mm) wide
and 13½ inches (347mm) deep. It weighs less than 11 pounds. With
only 8 pins on the head it manages an 8 x 9 matrix and the head can
survive over 30,000,000 characters.
The new printer is virtually an Epson. The manual
tells you so and dumping those masterpieces to this printer should
not prove too difficult as several screen dump programs have been
published in magazines over the years. Be warned though that several
printers that claim 'full Epson compatibility' are often only 98%
compatible and could hang on some commercial programs. I have not
had the opportunity to test this on every program on the market!
Either friction or tractor feed can be used but if
you want to use telex rolls you will have to get yourself a pair of
scissors as there is no paper cutting facility on the cover or
elsewhere. An unusual feature, which it shares with the 1029, is
that the plastic lid covering the platen pulls up from the back to
the front making it necessary to remove the cover to replace
ribbons. As the cover has no practical function other than a dust
cover, perhaps it would have been better to have hinged it at the
rear.
None of the Atari printers use the same ribbon.
The ribbon for the 1029 is fairly easy to get hold of, at £3.95 from
Boots, and although the manual says the XMM801 ribbon is
specifically designed, it should also be pretty standard at around
£5 or less. An annoying feature about the machine is that it prints
dead centre on the ribbon so that a twist in the ribbon will not
give it a longer life. Ribbons for the 1029 and XMM801 can be
re-inked at about a third of their cost if you can find the right
company to go to. The XMM801 also comes with a carbon ribbon which
allows exceptionally high quality print but which of course has to
be thrown away after one run through.
To load the paper, you need the paper release in
the friction position, high, but to use the tractor it must be in
the low position. You will need fairly slim fingers to change the
paper easily as this lever is squeezed between the outer case and
the edge of the carriage, mind you don't cut yourself on the metal
paper guide! All that was needed to fix this problem was for Atari
to put a small handle on top of the selector. There is no tension
release for changing the ribbon and the print head is fairly tight
against the platen.
If you want to use single sheets you will have to
disable the paper out sensor which can be done from within your text
file by sending ESC O. Unfortunately when I tried it, the printer
put a couple of extra line feeds in just where it would have sounded
the alarm.
Now why is this machine so special that it
commands £50 more than the 1029? Well, firstly, it is Epson
compatible and many people swear by this standard. It is a fully
featured, bi-directional, 80 cps, 480 dot per line (960 in high
density graphics mode) NLQ matrix printer with lots and lots of
features. It has double strike (NLQ), bold, double width, condensed,
Elite and Pica, normal and high density graphics modes, can
backspace and print a second character over a first. The Atari
international character set is, supported, there is a paper out
sensor, it can scroll from 1/6th of an inch to 1/216 of an inch. It
will support proportional spacing in Elite mode, has superscripts
and subscripts, definable bi- or uni-directional printing and can
control the platen in both directions, feeding the paper forwards or
backwards. There are also up to five tabulation stops which can be
set individually.
All in all this is an excellent machine that has
features which most of the better word processors can use to the
full. Add a couple more 'features', its price of £175 and the fact
that you don't need an interface and I am sure that this must be the
printer for any Atari owner who wants good quality print. Even if
you already have an interface you will be hard pressed to match the
quality at this price and if you have to fork out £60 odd for an
interface on top of the price of a third party printer, there is
surely no contest!
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