I’m working on a new project; implementing a NMEA 2000 stack on a PIC. NMEA is a protocol that sits on-top of CAN bus, and allows devices on-board boats to communicate. Anyway, this task is producing lots of audit printouts, and I mean, pages and pages of 132 column wide listing paper print-outs. It’s much easier to work from paper where you can scribble notes and flip back and fourth really quickly.

I had been using my trusty Epson FX-1170 wide carriage printer. It’s a good workhorse and I use it all the time for printing out assembler or program listings, but it’s slow. Watching paint dry slow, at around 2 minutes a page in a font that’s readable.

Imagine my happiness when my nostalgia radar lit-up on seeing that old “Line Printers” were affordable. I used to use a line printer back in my Nixdorf Computer days; a ZD09. I can’t remember how fast it was; probably around 600 LPM (lines-per-minute) but I remember it could rip though a 2000 sheet box of listing paper pretty darn quick. I’ve always wanted one, and this work actually pays some money, so I was going to have one.

Whilst searching the net, I stumbled across these people, Northwood CS Ltd who have a nice collection of different refurbished printers, including line printers available.

After a lot of research, I opted for a Printronix 5000. This printer comes in several styles and the variant Northwood had available was the “Pedestal” type. This is a printer unit mounted on top of a simple frame with casters. It would be lighter than the fully enclosed ones and more manoeuvrable; it’s still over 100 lbs in this configuration, but’s it’s pretty small and compact and if I binned my old HP8000 A3 laser printer (which would now only accept paper manually fed one sheet at a time), I would have room.

I had an email exchange with the Josh at the company and the printer was available, though he was hesitant that it was the right printer for me. I think he was concerned that I wouldn’t be able to get it working, and he was possibly right to be concerned as he didn’t want a disgruntled customer returning a palleted printer, but I was without fear. It would be fine.

The printer arrived on the back of an 18 ton lorry, and the absolutely brilliant lady driver stated that she was only supposed to drop the printer on the curb-side and then leave it to me, but there was no way I could move the darn thing. She dragged it onto my drive way, asked out of curiosity where it needed to eventually end up, and I pointed to my home office at the end of the garden. “No problem” she said, removed all the packaging and picked the bloody thing up and carried it to my workshop, whilst I just stood there and watched, and with a mixture of embarrassment and admiration, I couldn’t help think she would make a great next Mrs HobbyElectronics.

And here it is, a Printronix 5005 Pedestal line printer.

I have a quite powerful Dell PC that acts as host to all my virtual machines, and I’d already installed a parallel printer card. A 5M long cable connected this to the printer and I was ready to go.

The Windows 2016 generic text print driver actually worked, but it would only print using the font within the printer and I was having issues with controlling the page length.

I’d already checked and there were no drivers for this printer anywhere that I could find, but on checking the Printronix website there were drivers for a later P8000 line printer, and they were suitable for Windows 2016. On a whim I downloaded and installed them, and hey presto they seem to work perfectly.

I’m not trying any of the fancy barcode printing or other clever features, I just want it to print nice and quickly in a mono spaced font; I’ve found that “Courier New”, 10 point seems to do the job nicely.

I should mention that the printer mechanism is encased in an excellent sound deadenning enclosure (they usually are). It’s certainly not sound proof, but with the lid down it’s not that noisy and I’ve noticed that the fan seems louder than the printer.

I’m certainly not getting 600 LPM out of it, but it’s orders of magnitude faster than my old FX-1170. To print eight pages would have taken 45 minutes, now it takes around 2.

I’ve been going around buying up cheap, wide, music-ruled listing paper and have amassed a small stock of 6 boxes. Storing the stuff is another problem and giving me a good reason to clear out the spare bedroom.

Here are some pointers you should think about before investing in your own line printer.

• Space and access. Make sure you have space for it, and have a plan for getting it into that space. Line printers are typically VERY heavy. The P5000 is fairly light at 100 LBs (50 Kgs) but some of them may need 4 or more able bodies to move them. Think long and hard if you are considering placing it in an upstairs room. Getting it there will be a challenge, and your stairs and floors may not appreciate the weight. There’s a good reason why many old computer rooms were on the ground floor.
• Make sure the printer you have your eye on has some type of data interface you can work with. I was lucky that my printer has a standard Centronics interface. Some have weird and proprietary connections that you will have almost no chance of interfacing to a PC.
• Check you can get drivers for it and your operating system. I downloaded the manual for my printer before purchasing and on reading it showed the printer had various emulations built-in, including Epson FX, so I was reasonably confidant that with it’s parallel interface, I could get it to print something.
• Printer ribbons. This is very important. Many of these old printers use specialist printer ribbons and they can be hard to locate. I was lucky in that I eventually found a UK supplier who had compatible ones available. I bought a small stock.
• Get some continuous stationary. You won’t be loading A4 sheets into one of these bad boys. They eat boxes of listing paper for breakfast so you will want to make sure you can get hold of a reasonable supply. And it’s not cheap these days unless you stumble across a bargain. Whilst on the subject, you can sometimes pickup boxes of multi-part stationary (sometimes called NCR – No Carbon Required). This is paper that has 2 or more sheets loosely fixed together. You can, if you’ve nothing better to do, split these by hand into their individual lengths.
• This last one is a real problem… getting it serviced. Your printer will probably have already had a hard life and it’s not going to last forever. When it eventually fails, chances are you won’t be able to find spare parts and returning to a company that is even prepared to service it, is going to be very difficult and expensive in terms of logistics, shipping, never mind repair costs. What I’m saying is that it’s probably not worth a second mortgage to pay for one of these. You may be lucky and it lasts a lifetime, or maybe not. These printers have probably had a hard life and whist it’s true they don’t make them like they used to do, buyer be warned !!

So, there you have it. The service from the team at Northwood was excellent. They serviced the printer before shipping to make sure it was fully functional, and the packing was top notch. I really liked they had placed it on a pallet and completely wrapped the package in clingfilm. The weather has been truly dreadful the last few months with nothing but rain, so when it arrived and I feared it might need to spend the night on my driveway, I was partially reassured that it would stay dry.

Ohh… cost… I paid less than £400 for the printer, it’s initial service and shipping which I believe was a bargain. It also started a spring clean cycle which started with my old laser printer being slung, and has culminated with my driveway full of junk that needs to be disposed off.