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MegaDisc 08 (1988)(MegaDisc Digital Publishing)(AU)[WB].zip
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REVIEWS
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NX1000CL.rvw
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1988-05-28
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A REVIEW of the STAR NX-1000 COLOUR PRINTER
by Dennis Purcell
[Ed: see also the printing hint in "Readers_Hints" in
FEEDBACK, and of course the "Print.Manual" article.]
About five months ago Star released in Australia the NX-1000
series of quality nine pin dot matrix printers. After initial shortages
they are now readily available in most computer shops. Recommended retail
price is $599 for the standard model, but for an extra $100 you can
have the additional feature of COLOUR. For an Amiga owner, the colour
version is the only way to go. [Note that the standard model CANNOT be
upgraded to colour later.] The recommended retail prices are most
definitely n egotiable, as I've seen the NX1000-COLOUR advertised
for $556, including cable.
The Star company has built up a commendable reputation for
producing good quality but moderately priced Epson clone printers,
notably the Star Gemini and the Star NX10. The NX-1000 series follows the
same traditions but with the addition of colour, and a few other features
that makes the printer a worthy successor to the NX10.
The printer's main features are:-
1. Built-in Fonts.
The printer has 1 draft and 4 NLQ fonts. The four NLQ fonts are
Courier, Sanserif, Orator with small capitals, and Orator with lower
case. All fonts can be selected as standard or italic.
2. Speed.
30 cps in NLQ mode is pretty good, and 120 cps in draft is fast enough
for me.
3. Print Pitch.
The usual offering of Pica (10 cpi), Elite (12 cpi), Condensed Pica (17
cpi), Condensed Elite (20 cpi), Proportional Pica and Proportional Elite.
4. Paper Parking.
Paper parking is a neat system for quickly changing from the the usual
fanfold paper (used say, for drafting a letter), to single sheet
operation (perhaps an embossed letter-head sheet for a NLQ final copy),
then back again to fanfold paper.
A few simple controls rewinds the continuous paper, and when a single
sheet in dropped down the paper guide, an automatic feed activates to
advance the sheet to top of form ready for printing. When fanfold paper
is again required, the printer simply activates the sprocket feed to
advance the fanfold paper, and it's ready for printing again.
This system avoids the usual problems associated with changing paper
feed methods.
5. Soft Touch Control Panel.
The four, coloured, soft touch controls on the front of the printer,
together with the front mounted ON/OFF switch, gives the operator
flexible control over most of the printer's functions. These include:
*short self test and long self test
*set draft or one of four NLQ typestyles, standard
or italic
*set the print pitch
*generate a hexidecimal dump of all data being
sent to the printer by the computer
*line and page feeds
*forward and reverse microfeed
*set top of form
*clear the buffer
*set left and right margins.
6. Print Buffer
An 8K buffer giving faster and smoother graphics printing comes as
standard.
7. Colour text printing.
Standard text can be printed in black, red, blue, violet, yellow,
orange and green.
8. Printer Control Codes
If your word processor doesn't support printing in red or purple (few
do) or printing in double high and or double wide text (the NX1000 can)
then you couldn't do it without a great deal of bother. The clever people
who developed the NX1000 devised printer control codes using the format
"((X))n", which is typed directly into the text of the word processor.
The printer recognizes the combination of characters as a print control
code and executes a change in font, colour, text size, bold or italic as
ordered. Very neat!!
9. The Manual.
A comprehensive spiral bound manual with a fold out reference card
fully explain all the printer's features. There is also a handy User's
Guide to keep on the desk.
10. Ribbons.
Black ribbons cost around $12 and Colour ribbons around $24, so they
are not very expensive and they last a lot longer than ribbons for
thermal printers.
11. Preferences.
The printer is Epson compatible so under Workbench 1.2 select the
"Epson JX_80" and under the new 1.3 Workbench use the "EpsonX" printer
driver and the new PRINTER.DEVICE.
12 Graphics and Colour.
Colour printouts from Deluxe Paint, ProWrite 2 etc take longer to
produce than black and white because the print head needs four passes on
the one line, printing yellow, red, blue and finally black, to produce
all of the possible 4096 colours available. The new Workbench 1.3 is
highly recommended for both the dramatic increase in speed of graphics
printing as well as the additional graphics features available in
preferences.
The STAR NX-1000 COLOUR printer is a quality product with many
useful features and at a price that makes it almost impossible to resist.
For a first printer, or as an update for an ageing printer, I can
recommend without reservation, this robust and clever printer.
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