12 Dec
1998
12 Dec
'98
3:36 p.m.
At 08:55 AM 12/11/98 -0000, you wrote:
Roger wrote, regarding the printer in the HX-20 and
AIM-65:
I always thought that the more common printheads were 9x1 -- that is, a
single column of 9 dots. This moved across the paper printing 8 or so
times for each character. To have 5 sets spaced out would divide your
horizontal print time by 5.
For the HX-20, because it had only one row of dots, you then have to
multiply the time by 9 to get the 5 full characters. So the HX-20 probably
took 9/5 as long or was about twice as slow. It would have been
considerably slower if there were only 1 pin instead of 5 across.
As to five heads versus one, you can print five
characters at once. Faster
printing.
Disregarding the time spent moving the paper, it is slower (5/8 the speed),
since you are only printing five dots at a time rather than eight. But
speed wasn't the point. The real win was just that the mechanism was cheaper
than the more common
eight-vertical-dot mechanisms.
For the HX-20, that may have been very true, since it may have been prior
to Epson getting into buying/building mass quantities of printheads.
--------------------------------------------------------------------- O-
Uncle Roger "There is pleasure pure in being mad
roger(a)sinasohn.com that none but madmen know."
Roger Louis Sinasohn & Associates
San Francisco, California http://www.sinasohn.com/