★ HARDWARE ★ IMPRIMANTE DIVERS - 8-BIT PRINTER PORT|Amstrad Action) ★ |
| Imprimante Divers - 8-Bit Printer Port |
One of the fundamental problems with the design of the CPC is its printer port. For some unfathomable reason Amstrad produced the machine with a 7-bit printer port. What this means is that only half the Amstrad's character set can be printed out to the printer. Why? Surely it can't have saved that much money having one wire disconnected inside the machine? Still, ours is not to reason why. A 7-bit port it is. But it doesn't have to be. Not if you get hold of a Goldmark 8-bit printer port, that is. This little box of tricks puts the missing bit back. Now you can print the full character set and more - some graphics programs have difficulty producing worthwhile output as the missing bit means that not all the information is sent to the printer. The port comes in the guise of a printer cable with a small oiece of circuit board about six inches away from where the cable plugs into the computer. The cable is quite long - about 1.5 metres - and replaces the standard printer cable. (Normally you would have to buy an additional printer cable even if one was supplied with the printer, as the Amstrad circuit board connector is nonstandard. These can cost anything up to a tenner on their own.) In addition to this, the cable has several pins disconnected. This saves you from the dreaded 'pin-14 syndrome'. Another anomaly in the design of the printer port means that some printers mis-interpret the computer's output and print a large gap between every line of text. No amount of messing around with dip switches or control codes will put it right and the only cure is to physically disconnect the offending pin by snipping the wire in the cable. Goldmark's lead saves you going through those hassles. The printer port is initialised by running a small piece of code before printing anything. This tells the computer what's what, and anything printed from then onwards will come out with its full complement of eight bits. The program has to be typed in initially -it's not supplied on disk or tape - which is a little bit of a pain but only has to be done the once and no doubt keeps the costs down. An example of printed output comes with the port just to prove it works and also contains that vital listing to get it working in the first place. Should you not require eight bits of output then the computer will print out normally with the cable in place if you don't run the software. The port performed well with all the software we tried it with. We were able to print accented characters, line and block graphics to out hearts' content. Note that the extra characters available won't be those that the Amstrad has, but those in the printer, though many printers will allow you to download redefined character sets. At £25 the 8-bit port not excessively expensive, especially as it gets around the need to buy an additional printer cable. And Goldmark's little piece of electronics hasn't really got any competition. KDS used to produce a printer port, but that's no longer available. The question is, do you actually want one? The majority of people will be able to get by without an 8-bit printer port. It's useful, sure, but not necessary for the printing of simple documents that most people use their printers for.
VECTICT: 78%
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