ZX Printer Winter Warm-Up 2008 Retrochallenge

[shalroth]

Is this using original "Astronauts Bog Roll" paper or have you substituted fax paper? It doesn't look as shiny as ZX paper...

I recently discovered that paper rolls for the SiPix A6 portable printer fit just fine in an Alphacom 32 / Timex-Sinclair 2040, both being 105mm wide. Perhaps this could work in the ZX Printer, if the sparks don't burn the paper?

[wgoodf]

nope - that roll is the original silver paper. i believe the smell was ozone. - i also have an alphacom its printing is blue-er on white. much better to actually read, but not half as cool!

[shalroth]

Fair enough! I am wondering though if anyone has tried 'fax' paper in a zx printer - ZX paper hasn't been made since 1983 and it's hard to find!

I'm fairly certain the smell was that of aluminium vapour. I'm a support engineer and I've spent enough time around faulty laser printers to recognise the smell of ozone... the ZX printer was literally something else!!

Cheers!

[hyweljw]

Sorry if the previous post sounded a bit ... bitty - I had to heavily cut it down as the 500 characher limit provided by youtube is frankly silly.

[hyweljw]

I had one of these as a teenager - bear in mind that its barely six inches across.

The noise it made in this clip is such a memory jerker, not to mention seeing the sparks happen as it was printing - as I'd download literally yards of code I'd written (powered purely through the Spectrum's power bus) only to find it had run out of paper before the end!

And the room STANK of aluminium vapur for days too afterwords!

Printing out code like this was more reliable than using the microdrive though.

[6364gg2]

Sounds like me at the dentist!

[DRNEGOLICIS]

why does it spark like that it looks cool i wish my dot matrix sounded like that it would be funny

[wgoodf]

its a spark printer. it burns the silver coating on the paper, rather than printing an ink.

[shalroth]

Speifically, the paper is black and has an aluminium coating. The spark vapourizes the aluminium wherever a 'dot' is needed revealing the black colour beneath.

Seriously though, it was bad enough having to put up with Sinclair's imaginary shipping dates and poor quality control (not to mention vapourware). Did they really expect us to breathe in a potentially harmful amount of aluminium vapour every time we pressed LLIST?

[stevebasset]

Great stuff! Not retro enough, the original paper was much more silver than that. And did you do the classic method of putting a clothespeg on the end to help pull the paper?

[shalroth]

I used to put a used Bic biro through the paper roll, helped it grip better. It was still gash though! I much preferred my Alphacom.

[lemonrind]

Sounds like an angry, screaming, injured robot.

[ppppsl]

I forgot about the sparks that little thing created, not to mention the noise. Memories!!!

[TacoSoft]

Awesome!