Dot matrix printer in action

A 9-pin dot matrix printer (Oki Microline 321) printing out a test page on a low quality setting. This is a farly large (and heavy) A3 format capable printer. Please comment, rate and subscribe!

[catcubus]

Hearing it in action is giving me flashbacks of being back in elementary school where the coolest day of the week was being in the computer lab and listening to these printers in action. Good stuff.

[LonelyAutomata]

Can't believe I miss this stuff. We had a few of these mothballed at the storage room on my first job, and they came out once per year to print a massive report.

[samverve]

Watching this makes me wish I still had my old dot matrix. Printing my homework at 1.00am didn't always go down well! :-(

[rijden-nu]

Man, I really needed that. I feel like I'm 12 again, listening to my mother print her endless meeting notes for the next day in the middle of the night.

[tpmiranda]

Customer: "So, how fast does this bad boy print?"
Seller: "No."

[derrick]

I had to look this up because as I'm watching my 3D printer create an entire sculpture with nothing but a little fan noise I am astounded how far printing has come in my relatively short life.

[MattKittredge]

I feel like I'm at Jiffy Lube, waiting for my receipt...

[brentfisher]

The good thing about these printers aside from printing on carbon copy papers is that when the ink runs out it doesn't just up an quit all at once like an inkjet printer, instead the print gradually gets lighter and lighter.

[LaserGryph]

Johnson! I told you I wanted those spreadsheets in to me by noon!

[charleshein]

Ah, the music of a dot matrix printer.

[krisr]

Still got these in my workplace for printing invoices. Absolutely love it.

[JasonHalversonjaydog]

brings back memories!  looks like the exact model of printer we had in high school, remember that sound printing my homework and having to tear off the strips on the side of the paper :)

[Maharddhika]

Thank you for this video! I'm studying for A+ and I needed to see what an Professor Messer meant when he said these things were noisy

[BenHutchinson]

Using software I wrote in Visual Basic, I managed to get a partial reconstruction of the printed page, just from the sound of the printer. I found 2 problems preventing me from getting a better reconstruction.
1) It seems that for each column of each character printed, all 8 or 10 pins in the print head fire simultaneously, not sequentially.
2) The duration of each line or characters (or strip of an image) is not always exactly the same (only approximately the same), though it contains the exact same number of columns of ink.
Problem one means I can't reconstruct actual letters that are one character high, as there is no way to separate the pixels vertically within each character.
Problem two means that for a sound card (which uses a constant sample rate) the lines take slightly different durations, so the page content appears "wavy" in the reconstructed image.
I assume that the print head knows where it is on the page, by some kind of positional encoder in the stepper motor, so it has no problem printing exactly.

[miai.]

In the early 90s, we were one of the very few families with a computer (packard bell) and we had a dot matrix printer. I liked the sound and would print out my name in jumbo sized letters with hearts.

[Reycied]

Ah, the 80's / 90's. When I would beg my grandpa to let me write and print out my terrible childhood stories on his computer, then bounce eagerly by the printer as it spooled out my ideas. Thanks for the nostalgia.

[CastToVoid]

I can smell the room our dot matrix printer was in when hearing the sounds. Thanks for sharing

[adamadkins]

Loved the paper for these. I'd tear off the dot strip sides, fold them over one another, and make an accordion

[jonmilligan]

Just here to reminisce about how awesome the 80's and 90's was! This takes me back to school homework days! Good old days! Love it!

[znxkfkfkfkfkfkcckckjckck]

As the wise danny sexbang would say...