LGR - Star NX-2420 Color Dot Matrix Printer

Mmmmm yeah.... tractor feed paper!!!!

Carey Brown

Also. I remember my dad bought a Star NL-10 when we had an Amiga in the early 90s, with a A4 paper feeder attached it was wild. And when we got a pc in 96 he upped the printer to a Oki Led printer. But loved printning my school assingments on the Star printer, trying to make the printout special so I could physical photocopying at school pictures from the books i was using as sources and cutting them out and gluing them in place. Ahhh good old days. Hand made WYSIWYG.

Because Why-Nerd

I love the kind of "behind the scenes" shot, where we can see your camera setups and yourself in the monitor when you are test printning stuff. Nice 😀

Because Why-Nerd

You bet, glad you enjoyed it!

LGR

Wow, I remember those! BTW, I see that you follow Samantha Harris. Well I'm Sam's Dad. Small world :)

Neil Harris

That dot matrix printing sound gave me all sorts of nostalgic feelings... Thanks for the quality video as usual Clint!

Frederic St-Georges

Glad you enjoyed it!

LGR

This was amazing! 😁

Adam Christensen

Seems they've become somewhat uncommon nowadays, too! At least from my limited searching for a working unit online the past couple months.

LGR

Sadly not, since as shown in the video the two ribbons are completely different sizes and even then the internal mechanisms are not the same.

LGR

Yeah I almost scrapped the whole video since it was so disappointing on my end, but hopefully it's still got enough of a journey that it's fun for folks!

LGR

Definitely trying again, if not with another ribbon then with another color dot matrix! As mentioned near the end I've got a couple more options :)

LGR

I wish I knew where my Epson LQ-860 went. I printed so many color banners on that thing!

Brodeur

This video made me miss our old work dot matrix printer we used in the colour matching lab. I first used it in 1995 when I started and we only got rid of it about 5 years ago when we couldn't source any print ribbons. We had same paper as used for the banner but sadly we only printed QC results using the Print Screen button as intended. Had to disassemble it a few times to heath robinson a fix many a time

Man, the fact we didn't see chess.bmp being printed makes me sad. @LGR any way you can try again some other time if/when you fix the ribbon/get a replacement?

Reminds me of when I was a kid using DOS Photoshop on our computer with only a monochrome monitor. Thinking back on it, it was hilariously inefficient since I wouldn't even know what the pictures would look like until actually printing them on our slow dot matrix.

Sell the T-Shirt and the Banner for a good cause :-)

Man, you're killing me with this! We have to figure out a way to make it print again in color! I totally appreciate the fact that you show the good, the bad, and the ugly, because somethings just turn out ugly. But I really would love to see some life breathed back into this again. Truth be told though, until HP perfected the inkjet, dot matrix printers were really the way to go. Back in 1993 I bought an Olivetti inkjet, and a NEC Lineprinter (really a laser printer), but I stuck with an IBM Proprinter.

Dinty's Hideaway

I remember wanting a 24-pin printer so bad but they were pricey. I was stuck with a cheap epson 9-pin printer with crap for driver support.

Ah that sound. Takes me back.

Richard Shears

I worked at an office in the early 2000s that was still using a DOS application, and we had to print weekly/monthly reports that could run a hundred pages or more. SO MANY DEAD TREES. Four dot matrix printers, in their own room so the noise wouldn't interfere too badly, with a whiteboard on the wall where you put your initials under the printer you were using, so somebody else's report wouldn't be attached to the end of yours, forcing you to hunt through an inch of paper to find the break.

moosemaimer

Yeah! The sound of an old dot matrix printer chugging away brings back memories of my first printers, a 9-pin Epson Apex-80 and a 24-pin Citizen GSX-140 (I think). Still have them in a garage somewhere. The Citizen was supposed to be capable of color, but I never had the ribbon to try it. Interesting to get an idea of how it would have worked!

Cetega

I live in Tokyo, Japan. If you needed help forwarding on anything, I would be happy to help.

Jamie Cruickshank

Print screen button is for actually printing the screen! I have used pc's since I got my 486 in 1993, and I don't think I ever new it was for actual printing a physical paper. How is that possible?! You just blew my mind with the simplest thing :P I also want a dot matrix printer now.

Uncleawesome

Thanks Clint! It seem like some shops in Japan offers made to order ribbon <a href="http://www.mimosa.gr.jp/ink-ribbon/6_204.html" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://www.mimosa.gr.jp/ink-ribbon/6_204.html</a>

Can't you open a spare black cartridge and replace the ribbon with the color one? Since the mechanism is way better? Seeing the 486 woodgrain and listening to some printer noises turned me on. I remember using mine to print some clipart awesomeness. In monochrome only... I just did a video on a 1995 Compaq laptop and asked myself the same question: "why am I doing this?" 😁

Deckard Games

Thanks Clint! Is there any possibility of showing a close up of those fonts? I'd love to see the sans serif and script up close.

Rachel Staddon

I want a vintage printer to 🤓

Thanks for sharing this! Memories are coming back. I still have star LC-10 somewhere around here. This 9 pins printer was hooked up to an Atari ST back then.

Laurent

Thanks so much Clint! My dad bought one of these printers back in ‘92 and brings back the noise and the anticipation as it slowly printed in colour.

And of course the PC we use to send data to it uses Windows XP.

Alyxx the Rat

We have a cutter at work that uses tractor feeds and it always brings me back to dot matrix printers.

Alyxx the Rat

Well this is a blast from the past... My dad had a dot matrix printer as a kid. I'm not sure if it actually did colour but it definitely did a lot of posters, birthday cards and so on that we designed on the PC in Windows 3.1.

Alyxx the Rat

You know why you made this? Because we love it. Another great video! Such nostalgia with the banner printing.

Andrew Paul

ah man.... that iconic printing sound.... *.*

Brian Brown

Awesome! Found this really interesting for someone who doesn't really remember dot matrix printers. Do you think you could perhaps replace the foam on the rollers with replacement foam with a sticky back? Perhaps insulation foam from the hardware store.

Paul Han

This is certainly a trip down memory lane, we moved from a dot matrix to a very early Oki laser printer. I recall a friend had one of these back in the early 90's , the insanity of being able to print colour when we were kids.

Dave Langley

Well as a tech review, you can definitely say it would have looked great had you needed to print something in color within a few years of its release when the ink likely would have worked flawlessly! I'm sure it would've been great in its day!

Terry Lee

Why make a 31 minute video on a color printer? Cause why not?

Touya Chikage