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1027 worth keeping?


kurtm

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I've got a friend working on a project (S-Drive variant). He's looking for more SIO connectors (I had 2 from an old Okidata printer board). He's eyeing his 1027 printer which he thinks would still work. Should I strenuously object to him sacrificing a 1027?

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I've got a friend working on a project (S-Drive variant). He's looking for more SIO connectors (I had 2 from an old Okidata printer board). He's eyeing his 1027 printer which he thinks would still work. Should I strenuously object to him sacrificing a 1027?

 

How well does it work? Are the rubber character wheels deteriorated? If not, I've got some dead ones here that I would trade for a good working 1027.

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I have a 1027 that still works, I re ink the roller and when that fails I get a new roller. I would keep the 1027. It is history in motion. There are plenty of dead things to use.... I wish there was a thread that had one purpose... to get people to swap truley broken equipment so the parts that are good such as the cases could be harvested and used for recasing new stuff or to save the life of something that is not as bad off. Just like the non profit donor program for organs in most countries.

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I have a 1027 that still works, I re ink the roller and when that fails I get a new roller. I would keep the 1027. It is history in motion. There are plenty of dead things to use.... I wish there was a thread that had one purpose... to get people to swap truley broken equipment so the parts that are good such as the cases could be harvested and used for recasing new stuff or to save the life of something that is not as bad off. Just like the non profit donor program for organs in most countries.

 

That's actually a pretty good idea. Have an Atari recycle thread :)

 

You want to start it?

 

--Kurt

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I've got a friend working on a project (S-Drive variant). He's looking for more SIO connectors (I had 2 from an old Okidata printer board). He's eyeing his 1027 printer which he thinks would still work. Should I strenuously object to him sacrificing a 1027?

 

I'd say no. We can use all kinds of parallel printers and that one is so slow and out of date it’s not worth using.

 

I would keep the case plastic. As we build more and more homebrew upgrades, matching cases are nice to have.

 

As SIO connectors become scarcer, I'd also suggest that somewhere in the SIO chain to wire in a new more commonly available port. Then for your home built items, you can use those down the chain.

 

PS

But, if it is really bugging ya, you might suggest he first offer it up to trade for a dead one if the other person pays all the shipping. Then can tear up one thats already broken.

Edited by sl0re
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Half working printers are great for Y axis robotics projects.

 

Make a base, orient the internals vertically, and you have a highly controllable robotic apparatus that can be used easily with standard print commands.

 

If you use two (or more for more complicated stuff, including Z), you can have XY, like the standard components inside of robotic tape library storage units. These can be used in an XY 'table-like' fashion.

 

Enjoy

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Wasn't Atarimax.com having new SIO connectors made? That would solve the problem.

 

Mitch

That's what I've heard (and seen evidence of), but nothing concrete about their availability. Mainly mentions of "soon". But it's been "soon" for what seems like months, so I think my friend didn't want to wait.

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Sad to say that I actually dumped, yes dumped, several 1020s, a 1027 and a fully working boxed xmm801 in the trash years ago. I sure as hell wish i kept the 1027 and the XMM. The 1027 is such a sexy little printer. I have yet to find anything of recent design that comes close to the compactness of that printer. Even cheap inkjets aren't as small as that thing was. Heck, the 600XL was just a tad bigger.

 

 

I want a 1027 in the box! (actually I want an 800XL with freddie and 128K but..)

Edited by kheller2
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I would object. The 1027 isn't worth much but if the wheel isn't all gummy then it stands a fair chance of still working which is truly an awesome thing to see and as such it deserves to be in any Atari collection. These were true Letter Quality printers even though to actually do so required quite a bit of production time and set up and some wasted paper - they really could do it.

 

And then I got the $50 XDM-121 or whatever that thing was. Overnight I fell out of love with my 1027 in favor of a REAL printer and then as soon as I saw a Star 2410 zipping away on fan-fold paper that was the end of the Atari printers as far as I was concerned.

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These were true Letter Quality printers even though to actually do so required quite a bit of production time and set up and some wasted paper - they really could do it.

 

One advantage to the 1027: when I was in high school, there were teachers who refused to accept papers printed on a dot-matrix printer (either for stylistic reasons, or they thought "the computer wrote it for him", or maybe just because "back in my day, we didn't have these fancy-schmancy computers...")

 

The same teachers always complimented me on how great my "typewritten" papers looked, and how I must be a perfect typist because there was never any white-out on the pages :)

 

It was a sad day when the 1027 finally died... I wish I'd kept the corpse though, maybe could fix it now, or recycle the parts.

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Man, I threw away several Atari printers, including a 1027, when I moved a few years ago. Some of them were even in the box. I feel a little guilty about it, but only a little since those printers all sucked. :)

 

..Al

 

So glad to hear I'm not the only one who did that. I feel guilty about it occasionally. At one time, I had every piece of 8-bit hardware Atari produced commercially in the US (no prototypes or anything), nearly all of it boxed. I just ran out of room and got rid of most of it -- in the dumpster, actually! Sometimes I wish I'd kept it, but then I doubt I'd ever use any of it anyway. The neatest ones were also the ones hardest to maintain and/or supply, sadly.

 

The 1027 and the 1020 were really nifty pieces of consumer computing history. I remember printing stock price graphs on the 1020 and correspondence on the 1027 at one point. They worked fine for what they were. Slowly, but fine.

Edited by Ransom
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The 1027 and the 1020 were really nifty pieces of consumer computing history. I remember printing stock price graphs on the 1020 and correspondence on the 1027 at one point. They worked fine for what they were. Slowly, but fine.

 

Ah yes, the 1020 "printer/plotter", I remember waiting forever for hex dumps and disassemblies to print back when i worked on that sort of thing... :cool:

I wonder if anyone still makes the pens for it =P

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Hey everyone... I just wanted to drop by and say thanks for the comments here. I'm the friend of kurtm's who was considering trashing the 1027 for the SIO ports.

 

I'll be making another post later today regarding the SDrive-based project that I'm working on.

 

-Steve

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Yes you can still buy new pens for the 1020, and the 1027 is a fine printer. I have never had a head disintegrate, just the foam inker, which is easily replaced. I also had a teacher who refused dot matrix printout even the 24 pin versions. He accepted the 1027 EVERY time. At the time I could not comprehend it but now that I am older I can understand it completely. I can vouch for myself that reading type written text over even some of todays cheaper ink jet printers is easier on my eyes! Quite a few quality laser, inkjet, and pigment based printers make decent text these days, good luck on finding a driver to make it happen directly! I never had a problem with my 1027, it is still serving me well today.

I laugh at those who complain about gummed up gears, like anything else... try cleaning and oiling things... my lord! All printers require maintenance.. my epson needs to be cleaned cared for pads replaced nozzles cleaned etc etc etc. I enjoy having STAND ALONE Atari systems that can still do it all... a lot of these guys could care less in fact they seem to get off on saying throw it away... I can't figure it out unless they are investment collectors.

The 1027 and the 1020 were really nifty pieces of consumer computing history. I remember printing stock price graphs on the 1020 and correspondence on the 1027 at one point. They worked fine for what they were. Slowly, but fine.

 

Ah yes, the 1020 "printer/plotter", I remember waiting forever for hex dumps and disassemblies to print back when i worked on that sort of thing... :cool:

I wonder if anyone still makes the pens for it =P

 

 

Edited by _The Doctor__
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The 1027 is junk.. The printheads do fall apart.. Its a set of rubber belts that have the characters attatched.. What do you expect after 25 years? Yes it was a cheap letter-quality printer back in the day.. Yes it accomplished its purpose back then.. And yes there have been made hundreds of models of vastly superior letter quality printers that work from a standard paralell interface(thus working fine with the ATARI) and employ daisy-wheel or other style print mechanisms that wont dry-rot and fall apart with age.. They also use ink ribbons (which you can still buy from any commerical office suplier)instead of some crap foam pad.. They are also much faster than the 1027...

 

The 1027's plastic case was well made.. The PCB and electrical components were well made as well... The entire mechanical portion of the printer was a very cheap "asian-junk" design by comparisson to ANYTHING that you could call a "well built" machine.

 

An that's the damn truth....

Edited by MEtalGuy66
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And yet my well made well maintained 1027 printer is still working, and for the record, I have 5 epsons that had piezo failures, 4 hp injets that had ribbon cable failures, 3 hp with optic failure and 3 dot matrix printers have pin failure (when the pin either fractures and/or the attached wire snapped). LOL btw daisy wheels do wear out. I had to buy them in ten packs! Ribbons I re-inked till they also wore out. Drums, fusers as well as their pads & lasers all wore out, Yet all I ever needed for my 1027 was a toothbrush, oil, ink, and some foam rollers. The rubber stamping pad does not get oiled, they are on a plastic drum wheel which may need oil in a few specific spots. The drum moves as a unit.

I stand by a product that has stood by me. Some may not like the speed or noise it makes, But I suspect they never had to run a blue line in before deadline.

 

The 1027 is junk.. The printheads do fall apart.. Its a set of rubber belts that have the characters attatched.. What do you expect after 25 years? Yes it was a cheap letter-quality printer back in the day.. Yes it accomplished its purpose back then.. And yes there have been made hundreds of models of vastly superior letter quality printers that work from a standard paralell interface(thus working fine with the ATARI) and employ daisy-wheel or other style print mechanisms that wont dry-rot and fall apart with age.. They also use ink ribbons (which you can still buy from any commerical office suplier)instead of some crap foam pad.. They are also much faster than the 1027...

 

The 1027's plastic case was well made.. The PCB and electrical components were well made as well... The print mechanism was a very cheap asian-junk design by comparisson to ANYTHING that you could call a "well built" machine.

 

An that's the damn truth....

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And yet my well made well maintained 1027 printer is still working, and for the record, I have 5 epsons that had piezo failures, 4 hp injets that had ribbon cable failures, 3 hp with optic failure and 3 dot matrix printers have pin failure (when the pin either fractures and/or the attached wire snapped). LOL btw daisy wheels do wear out. I had to buy them in ten packs! Ribbons I re-inked till they also wore out. Drums, fusers as well as their pads & lasers all wore out, Yet all I ever needed for my 1027 was a toothbrush, oil, ink, and some foam rollers. The rubber stamping pad does not get oiled, they are on a plastic drum wheel which may need oil in a few specific spots. The drum moves as a unit.

I stand by a product that has stood by me. Some may not like the speed or noise it makes, But I suspect they never had to run a blue line in before deadline.

 

The 1027 is junk.. The printheads do fall apart.. Its a set of rubber belts that have the characters attatched.. What do you expect after 25 years? Yes it was a cheap letter-quality printer back in the day.. Yes it accomplished its purpose back then.. And yes there have been made hundreds of models of vastly superior letter quality printers that work from a standard paralell interface(thus working fine with the ATARI) and employ daisy-wheel or other style print mechanisms that wont dry-rot and fall apart with age.. They also use ink ribbons (which you can still buy from any commerical office suplier)instead of some crap foam pad.. They are also much faster than the 1027...

 

The 1027's plastic case was well made.. The PCB and electrical components were well made as well... The print mechanism was a very cheap asian-junk design by comparisson to ANYTHING that you could call a "well built" machine.

 

An that's the damn truth....

 

I have a 92 GEO metro that has 340,000 miles on it, which I drive on a daily basis with no problems whatsoever... And I've had all kinds of engine failures, transmission failures, etc. with numerous other vehicles which were much better built.... Yes, you CAN "polish a terd".....

 

You may have had excellent luck with your 1027, and you may have done an excellent job of maintaining it through the years.

The fact is, your 1027 is not "well built" by any standard... And if you think it is, you have a very strange standard of comparisson to say the least..

Edited by MEtalGuy66
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And yet my well made well maintained 1027 printer is still working, and for the record, I have 5 epsons that had piezo failures, 4 hp inkjets that had ribbon cable failures, 3 hp with optic failure and 3 dot matrix printers have pin failure (when the pin either fractures and/or the attached wire snapped). LOL btw daisy wheels do wear out. I had to buy them in ten packs! Ribbons I re-inked till they also wore out. Drums, fusers as well as their pads & lasers all wore out, Yet all I ever needed for my 1027 was a toothbrush, oil, ink, and some foam rollers. The rubber stamping pad does not get oiled, they are on a plastic drum wheel which may need oil in a few specific spots. The drum moves as a unit.

I stand by a product that has stood by me. Some may not like the speed or noise it makes, But I suspect they never had to run a blue line in before deadline.

 

The 1027 is junk.. The print heads do fall apart.. Its a set of rubber belts that have the characters attached.. What do you expect after 25 years? Yes it was a cheap letter-quality printer back in the day.. Yes it accomplished its purpose back then.. And yes there have been made hundreds of models of vastly superior letter quality printers that work from a standard parallel interface(thus working fine with the ATARI) and employ daisy-wheel or other style print mechanisms that wont dry-rot and fall apart with age.. They also use ink ribbons (which you can still buy from any commerical office suplier)instead of some crap foam pad.. They are also much faster than the 1027...

 

The 1027's plastic case was well made.. The PCB and electrical components were well made as well... The print mechanism was a very cheap asian-junk design by comparisson to ANYTHING that you could call a "well built" machine.

 

An that's the damn truth....

 

I have a 92 GEO metro that has 340,000 miles on it, which I drive on a daily basis with no problems whatsoever... And I've had all kinds of engine failures, transmission failures, etc. with numerous other vehicles which were much better built.... Yes, you CAN "polish a terd".....

 

Your 1027 is not "well built" by any standard... And if you think it is, you are a fool.

 

Case well made/pcb /and electrical well made(your own words). My car had a tire blow out so now it's all junk(belt wore out). Also, who is a fool? but the fool who calls him a fool? Insanity is repeating the same behavior over and over again expecting a different result...

 

I have more than one 1027. I have more than one Atari system. It all works. Yet all the 'better built' stuff I have owned to make employ and friends happy has 'ALL' died.. what is truly the better built machine?

 

I still stand by a product that has outlasted all those 'superior' products. Just like I stand by a person who always has my back. Time tested. Simple as that.

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