STX-80 Printer

ZX Computing

DOWN FROM £149 TO £79, STAR'S STX-8 OFFERS A GOOD, LOW-COST PRINTING FACILITY. Star Micronics £79 This printer has been out for a while, but the recent price reduction to £79 makes it a very interesting proposition for Spectrum and QL owners. The STX-80 is a medium sized stumpy white box which looks neat and tidy. Several operating features contribute to this and I'll go into them later. It is large enough to look like a "real" printer yet compact enough to fit into a home user's limited space. At this price there are bound to be limitations and the first one which will no doubt put many off, is that it works by using thermal paper. But those with memories of Sir Clive's noisy, unreliable, smudgy, indistinct, temperamental ZX Printer should not allow this to bias their opinion of such machines, especially this one! The printer uses rolls of paper 8.5 inches wide and this will cope with up to 80 characters per line. The paper is smooth, slightly shiny and pure white. Ink can be black or blue depending on the type of paper you purchase. The manual takes great pains to cater for the computer illiterate and explains everything in great detail, so no difficulty should be experienced setting things up. The STX-80 is Centronics ported and you will need an interface to connect it to your Spectrum. We used the Kempston Centronics E and the Euroelectronics ZX Lprint 3 with it and it worked perfectly with both. These cost £49.95 and £39.95 respectively and both contain their own built in software which makes using them very easy. OPTIONS The options are rather limited, an enlarged character function is provided, line feed and form feed, three line spacing options, Carriage Return, block graphics and switch to Bit image mode. Six DIP switches are fitted and these control 12 or 11 inch page length. Auto or manual line feed, 7 or 8 bit interface, and three switches which, depending on the combination of ON/OFF allow selection of USA. Swedish, English, German, Dutch, French, Italian or Spanish character sets. Although limited, this does in fact represent a good choice of options, especially considering the price. Bit image mode operates on 480 dots per line, which means that you have to limit yourself to 48 characters per line if using TASPLUS or a similar package, and some screen dumps may loose the last bits off the right hand edge of the picture. Note that the normal Tasword 64 character line is easily dealt with and the QL Quill 80 characters per line mode works well. Characters are formed on a 5x9 matrix, while the block graphics are formed on a 6x6 matrix. 7 or 8 pins can be used on BI mode. IN USE The first thing that struck me was the almost silent mode of operation. I thought it wasn't working until it made a slight burp as it advanced the paper one line! Even though it uses a roll of paper, it actually counts lines per page and so any software using set page lengths - eg. Quill - will operate without problem. The printing speed is rather slow at 60 CPS and the print quality is rather basic. This is not really intended as a document quality printer but it is good enough to produce excellent listings, good screen dumps and acceptable text. The fact that it uses a roll of paper contained in a compartment at the back makes it a very tidy machine (no lengths of tractor feed paper to get under your feet!) Another great advantage is the almost silent mode of operation, no more will printing mean that all conversation has to stop! At the price it is selling at, and even allowing for the extra money for an interface, this cannot be anything other than a good buy (provided you do not need high quality text). A printer to provide much higher quality would cost at least twice as much. Definitely worth considering.