Questions about Dot Matrix Printers

[GreenXenon]

Hi:

I'm curious about those old dot matrix printers. These types of
printers make sounds that laser, inkjet and other printers don't make.
I have some questions about this audio.

1. What part of the dot matrix printer makes this sound?

2. What determines the pitch or frequency of the sound?

3. Which dot matrix printer makes the lowest pitch sound when
printing?


Thanks,

Green Xenon

 

[Rob]

Hi:

I'm curious about those old dot matrix printers. These types of
printers make sounds that laser, inkjet and other printers don't make.
I have some questions about this audio.

1. What part of the dot matrix printer makes this sound?

2. What determines the pitch or frequency of the sound?

3. Which dot matrix printer makes the lowest pitch sound when
printing?


Thanks,

Green Xenon

They were placed in a sound proofing box to reduce the noise - none were
quite.

They have a series of pins in the head 9 I think was the minimum -
quality questionable - but they worked. The pins hit a typewriter ribbon
to print.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot_matrix_printer

 

[Andrew Rossmann]

[This followup was posted to comp.periphs.printers and a copy was sent
to the cited author.]

I'm curious about those old dot matrix printers. These types of
printers make sounds that laser, inkjet and other printers don't make.
I have some questions about this audio.

1. What part of the dot matrix printer makes this sound?

2. What determines the pitch or frequency of the sound?

3. Which dot matrix printer makes the lowest pitch sound when
printing?

A dot-matrix head is a series of pins fired rapidly by solenoids inside
a head. Typically 9, 18, or 24 pins were used. They are in a vertical
row and fire as needed as the head moves back and forth. A fabric ribbon
(some worked with film ribbons for smoother output) was between the head
and paper, and transfered the ink.

The frequency depends on the speed of printing and the number of pins.

The stepper motor used to move the head back and forth also tended to
make alot of noise. Some printers could print both ways. Some would only
print in one direction, requring the head to move back before printing
again. Even bidirectional printers had a one-way mode that usually gave
more even output, especially for graphics.

Frequency-wise, it depends on the model. An old, slow printer would
probably be the lowest.

There were even some color dot-matrix printers. I think some used a
multi-color ribbon, and it moved up and down to change colors, typically
printing one color per pass, so needing 3-4 passes per row.

 

[MD34]

Hi:

I'm curious about those old dot matrix printers. These types of
printers make sounds that laser, inkjet and other printers don't make.
I have some questions about this audio.

1. What part of the dot matrix printer makes this sound?

2. What determines the pitch or frequency of the sound?

3. Which dot matrix printer makes the lowest pitch sound when
printing?

Whatz a dot matrix printer?

 

[GreenXenon]

The frequency depends on the speed of printing and the number of pins.

So the more pins, the higher the frequency of the sound?

Frequency-wise, it depends on the model. An old, slow printer would
probably be the lowest.

Really, because I did a youtube search on sounds from the dot-matrix
printers and there were some really slow high-pitches ones.

 

[Bob Eager]

So the more pins, the higher the frequency of the sound?




Really, because I did a youtube search on sounds from the dot-matrix
printers and there were some really slow high-pitches ones.

Probably higher resolution, firing the pins more often.

 

[Elmo P. Shagnasty]

A dot-matrix head is a series of pins fired rapidly by solenoids inside
a head.

or, it could be a laser printing a matrix of dots on the page.

Think about it.

A laser printer is a page printer, because the entire page must be in
memory before you fire up the very fast laser to create that matrix of
dots. An impact printer is a character or line printer, because the
impact head need know only the next character to print--it doesn't worry
about the entire page at all.

Page printer vs. line (or character) printer--that's the difference.

But both prints are, technically, matrices of dots on the page.

 

[Fred McKenzie]

Whatz a dot matrix printer?

* _
* * \
* * O |
******* |
* * O |
* * _/

A dot matrix printer is an obsolete machine used for making "ASCII Art"

Reference:

<http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&expIds=17259,17311,23756,24416,24692,
24878,24879,25854,25907,26160,26209,26218,26339,26637,26788,26817,27047&s
ugexp=ldymls&xhr=t&q=ascii+art&cp=3&client=safari&rls=en&um=1&ie=UTF-8&so
urce=univ&ei=1TG2TPeVH4H78AaVrvGEAg&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&r
esnum=2&sqi=2&ved=0CC8QsAQwAQ&biw=964&bih=995>

 

[Andrew Rossmann]

The answers have been right on except that they use the past tense.
Dot matrix printers are still made and sold, see, e.g.,
http://www.okidata.com/mkt/html/nf/products-impact-printers.php

If you use NCR (~carbon) paper for invoices, bills, receipts, and the
like, an impact printer is required.

Do they still make 'daisy wheel' printers?

What about line printers that used a long band that ran the length of a
line and was hit as the right character passed by. I think they were
mainly used on mainframes and similar.

There were even some dot-matrix printers with multiple heads that
printed about 1/3 or 1/2 of the line at a time, minimizing head
movement.

I remember seeing my first laser printer in 1981. It was a huge IBM
printer run by a mainframe and cost about US$900K. It printed about 2-3
pages (that 132-character wide green-bar paper) at a time, with a short
pause which I was told was due to a gap in the drum.

I even remember using Teletype 33's with paper tape punch/reader!
Chunka-Chunka-Chunka-Chunka-THWAK.

 

[Bob Eager]

Do they still make 'daisy wheel' printers?

Probably not...too expensive to keep all those fonts!

What about line printers that used a long band that ran the length of a
line and was hit as the right character passed by. I think they were
mainly used on mainframes and similar.

Chain/Train printers. As opposed to the earlier ones with rotating
drums....train printers tended to have swappable bands.

http://www.tiskarny.ic.cz/CHAINPTR.gif

I even remember using Teletype 33's with paper tape punch/reader!
Chunka-Chunka-Chunka-Chunka-THWAK.

Oh, so do I...I started on those!

 

[Elmo P. Shagnasty]

Although within the realm of cosmic possibilities, no, a dot matrix
printer is an impact printer.

Not at all.

 

[Elmo P. Shagnasty]

Although within the realm of cosmic possibilities, no, a dot matrix
printer is an impact printer.

I did, and chose not to redefine a well defined term.
Also note that all inkjet printers are dot matrix using your
re-definition, since all of them print by squirting little dots of ink
in a matrix.

yeppers.

So be sure you're talking about the right thing: impact dot matrix
printers vs. non-impact dot matrix printers.

 

[Man-wai Chang]

A dot matrix printer is an obsolete machine used for making "ASCII Art"

No. It's mechanical, contact printer that actually hit the paper. Useful
for printing things over copy paper, e.g. password letters and pay slips.

--
@~@ Might, Courage, Vision, SINCERITY.
/ v \ Simplicity is Beauty! May the Force and Farce be with you!
/( _ )\ (x86_64 Ubuntu 9.10) Linux 2.6.35.7
^ ^ 20:32:01 up 14 days 21:49 1 user load average: 0.05 0.02 0.00
ä¸å€Ÿè²¸! ä¸è©é¨™! ä¸æ´äº¤! ä¸æ‰“交! ä¸æ‰“劫! ä¸è‡ªæ®º! è«‹è€ƒæ…®ç¶œæ´ (CSSA):
http://www.swd.gov.hk/tc/index/site_pubsvc/page_socsecu/sub_addressesa

 

[Man-wai Chang]

No. It's mechanical, contact printer that actually hit the paper. Useful

for printing things over copy paper, e.g. password letters and pay slips.

~~~~ carbon paper

--
@~@ Might, Courage, Vision, SINCERITY.
/ v \ Simplicity is Beauty! May the Force and Farce be with you!
/( _ )\ (x86_64 Ubuntu 9.10) Linux 2.6.35.7
^ ^ 20:37:01 up 14 days 21:54 1 user load average: 0.00 0.00 0.00
ä¸å€Ÿè²¸! ä¸è©é¨™! ä¸æ´äº¤! ä¸æ‰“交! ä¸æ‰“劫! ä¸è‡ªæ®º! è«‹è€ƒæ…®ç¶œæ´ (CSSA):
http://www.swd.gov.hk/tc/index/site_pubsvc/page_socsecu/sub_addressesa

 

[MD34]

* _
* * \
* * O |
******* |
* * O |
* * _/

A dot matrix printer is an obsolete machine used for making "ASCII Art"

Reference:
Not directed at you, but one of my favs:

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............../??/'...'/???`??
.........../'/.../..../......./??\
.........('(...?...?.... ?~/'...')
..........\.................'...../
...........''...\.......... _.??
.............\..............(
...............\.............\....

 

[MD34]

No. It's mechanical, contact printer that actually hit the paper. Useful
for printing things over copy paper, e.g. password letters and pay slips.

No, the ribbon hit the paper since you want to quibble.

 

[GreenXenon]

Although within the realm of cosmic possibilities, no, a dot matrix
printer is an impact printer.




I did, and chose not to redefine a well defined term.
Also note that all inkjet printers are dot matrix using your
re-definition, since all of them print by squirting little dots of ink
in a matrix.

And now back to the serious discussion.

Some dot matrix printers put out almost as much noise or more from
carriage drive than from the pins themselves.   A few were almost
whisper quiet as related to the pins.

Most of the faster ones whined like a banshee with pin drivers that
could print thru more copies than even some of the big 1200 lpm or so
drum/band printers.   If the carriage was moving but nothing printed,
you'd usually get a significant whistle from that movement.   The sound
of the pins depended on the speed, number of pins, and even the
characters being printed.

The OP should keep searching, they may find music tracks played on the
dot matrix--similar to the old Bolero played on a drum printer and air
capstan tape drives.

I remember, from the summer of '90 to the spring of '91, I used to
have a printer that made the sound I'm looking for. It was a parallel
printer. The pins would make a very low-pitched crunchy, choppy sound
when printing characters. It made me think of eating some cereal!
Appetizing to say the least. Anyways, despite the low-pitched sound,
the movement of the motors was rather fast.

Here are two pictures of the computer that used the aforementioned
printer:

1. http://www.computermuseum.li/Testpage/Corona-PC-1982.htm

2. http://www.thepcmuseum.net/comp_images/photo_CoronaPortable.JPG

I was a kid back then, about 6-7 years old. My dad gave me that
computer to play around with.

Does anyone have any idea what printer this was? I wonder if anyone
has made a youtube recording of its sounds.

 

[Andrew Rossmann]

There were some thermal dot matrix printers. Suspect some mechanisms
are still made, used for labels, etc. specialty.

Thermal printers are still very common, although most don't have a
moving head. Most receipt printers are thermal dot matrix, but typically
use a single line and print as the paper goes past. The drawback to
thermal paper is that some has been found to have high BPA content.

 

[Jeff Jonas]

If you use NCR (~carbon) paper for invoices, bills, receipts, and the

Do they still make 'daisy wheel' printers?

Highly doubtful because they're just too expensive to manufacture
unless there's enough volume to sell.
There's a lot of REAL METAL in those,
as compared to the few metal rods in today's mostly plastic printers.

My understanding is that daisy wheel printers
(and variations: IBM Selectric "golfball" typing element, NEC Spinwriter)
were for TRUE letter quality printing.
300-600 DPI laser printers achieve that,
with true graphics and any font desirable.
Just don't expect it to make carbon/carbonless copies,
but they're fast enough to just print more originals.

They were an intermediate technology whose time and need has passed.

What about line printers that used a long band that ran the length of a
line and was hit as the right character passed by. I think they were
mainly used on mainframes and similar.

Until recently, a friend worked at a warehouse that used a genuine
impact-style line printer (unsure if it was drum, band or rod)
for multipart forms.
Even the Pathmark supermarket near me has a dot matrix printer
in the office with a box of fanfold for some old-skool reporting requirement.

There were even some dot-matrix printers with multiple heads that
printed about 1/3 or 1/2 of the line at a time,
minimizing head movement.

I think "Printronix" was the cream of the crop for high speed
dot matrix printing.
A bar with a dot every .1 (or perhaps .2) inch was in front of the paper,
moving back and forth extremely fast (moved by a motor with an elliptical cog
and counterweight so the case didn't vibrate too badly).
The hammers were behind the paper (also .1 or perhaps .2 inches wide).
The hammer fired as the dot was in the proper place needed.
I don't recall the speed in LPM (lines per minute)
but it was mighty impressive.

I remember seeing my first laser printer in 1981. It was a huge IBM
printer run by a mainframe and cost about US$900K. It printed about 2-3
pages (that 132-character wide green-bar paper) at a time, with a short
pause which I was told was due to a gap in the drum.

I remember the ROLLS of paper nearly 5 feet across,
requiring fork lifts to move them!

I even remember using Teletype 33's with paper tape punch/reader!
Chunka-Chunka-Chunka-Chunka-THWAK.

The NJ Computer Museum and members are still running them
to fully operational PDP8, PDP11 and such!
The NJ computer museum
http://midatlanticretro.org/
locate at Camp Evans NJ
http://www.infoage.org

 

[Jeff Jonas]

There were some thermal dot matrix printers. Suspect some mechanisms

Thermal printers are still very common, although most don't have a
moving head. Most receipt printers are thermal dot matrix, but typically
use a single line and print as the paper goes past. The drawback to
thermal paper is that some has been found to have high BPA content.

Agreed. Early ones were like a dot matrix printer: 7 (or more)
heating elements on a carriage that went side to side along the line,
paper stepped up a line at a time.
I still have an IBM PC Jr printer like that.
The infamous "TI Silent 700" portable terminal was like that
but with a lousy character set.

Thermal fax machines took that one step further:
the thermal print head went the entire width of the paper.
The only moving part was the roller to move the paper forward.

Most cash register and ATM receipt printers are like that:
thermal paper with a thermal print-head the entire width of the paper.
They're nearly silent and some are surprisingly fast!

Also desktop label printers and P-touch label makers.
Some depend on thermal paper/labels, others use a film ribbon
similar to carbon paper for transferring ink to plain paper or label-film.