Although it was gratifying (and surprising) that my DottyMatrix serial-to-parallel interface worked as soon as I plugged it into an actual printer, there was one nagging flaw. And that was a lack of acknowledgement. The /ACK signal in the Centronics interface was often sadly neglected, if not ignored completely. But in theory, the sequence for printing a character goes like… Read more »
It seems the repairs to my venerable Epson MX-80 F/T III dot matrix printer did actually work because it’s now printing again! What’s more, it’s printing via the prototype of my DottyMatrix serial to Centronics parallel interface. Time for a quick recap. The DottyMatrix is based around an AVR ATMEGA328PB microcontroller. It takes input on a TTL-level serial connection and… Read more »
My old, beloved Epson MX-80 F/T III dot matrix printer is back in the land of the living. For now. As you can see from some of my earlier posts, I’m designing a serial-to-parallel interface with Centronics compatible DB25 connector so that I can print to my Epson from anything with a TTL serial port, such as a Raspberry Pi…. Read more »
It seems strange that both the capacitors and the transformer – the chief suspects in the investigation as to why my Epson MX-80 F/T III dot matrix printer belched out smoke – tested fine with a multimeter. As far as the capacitors were concerned, I measured resistance directly across their leads (having removed them from the circuit board) looking for… Read more »
And so to the next instalment of trying to get my Epson MX-80 F/T III dot matrix printer back up and working. Previously on Epson MX-80… Just over a year ago, lots of smoke came out accompanied by a crackling noise. I’ve removed the main smoothing capacitors from the PCB and tested them. They seem fine. I tested the transformer…. Read more »
Time for the next step in my attempt to bring my beloved old EpsonMX-80F/T III dot matrix printer back to life. But first, some pictures of gorgeous old retro components. As we’ll see, they might be all I have left. I do love old resistors. They have so much character. And look how thick the wires are. There’s also a… Read more »
It’s hard to lose an old friend with whom you’ve shared more than a third of a century’s worth of experiences. I’ll never forget the day it happened. I heard a coughing, spluttering noise, turned around and, sure enough, smoke was pouring out of the printer. And not just any old printer – my trusty Epson MX-80F/T III, the first… Read more »
It’s one of the curses of getting older. One by one your friends die around you. This time the bell tolled for my beloved old Epson MX-80F/T III dot matrix printer. It’s hard to express how much this delightful old beast means to me. Buying it was a huge step because it was so incredibly expensive (kids who buy printers… Read more »
Someone in a BBC Micro community on Google+ asked members to post pictures of their setups. So I quickly snapped this. There’s quite a lot going on in there – at least, there will be when I get the time to finish it. Alongside the BBC Master Turbo is a single 3.5in FDD and the TurboMMC storage device that I… Read more »