1984: PRINTERS - Potential PITFALLS and PERKS | Micro Live | Retro Tech | BBC Archive

[@Suviasi]

I hate the sound of Dot Matrix printer and dial up modem when I was younger. As I get older, those nostalgic sounds become music to my ears.

[@mabaker]

Because of the old good times where people actually respected each other.

[@Gripfall1]

I remember a review of a cheap Chinese dot matrix printer. It said it made the noise of splintering bamboo. Spot on, I thought.

[@caeserromero3013]

My dad had one at work years before we had one at home and I loved the sound dot matrix made. I printed out a few pieces of homework on the old Olivetti. I even remember doing painting at school on surplus computer paper with the tractor feed holes on the sides.

[@944steph]

I still use Epson RX-80 to print weighbridge tickets. A cupboard full of them in a storage room for parts keeps the ones in use going.

[@wisteela]

That's awesome.

[@TerryJonesPrinterRepairs]

most reliable consumer dot printer ever built.

[@skyrocketautomotive]

I love this so much! I've genuinely been thinking of using one for customer invoices for a good while now Maybe couple with a C64...

[@cdl0]

@@TerryJonesPrinterRepairs Panasonic KX-108[12] were also pretty robust, and very heavy. You can still buy ribbons for them.

[@ruk2023--]

@@skyrocketautomotive They are still used in several niche applications and you can still buy them new. I have most commonly seem them printing airline tickets in less developed countries and in the corner office of some warehouse where they need to print invoices and other stuff.

[@andyarchitect]

I remember the school computer classroom when the teacher asked everyone to print their work and we had about 10 of those noisy dot matrix printers all going at once 😆

[@wisteela]

A symphony of dot matrix

[@JJONNYREPP]

1984: PRINTERS - Potential PITFALLS and PERKS | Micro Live | Retro Tech | BBC Archive 1428pm 8.12.24 i liked computer class, in so much as they made lessons fit round the use and abuse of a computer... history class, maths, geography...

[@JasmineSurrealVideos]

We only had one printer in the business studies/IT room, in the store room, and we'd have to take it in turns to print out, and this was in the 90s lol.

[@JJONNYREPP]

@@JasmineSurrealVideos 1984: PRINTERS - Potential PITFALLS and PERKS | Micro Live | Retro Tech | BBC Archive 2351pm 8.12.24 strange innit... the amount of nostalgia that goes with antiquated guff? in theory, ok you have company branded computers and it's specific software, but in theory... printers and the like should be universal. it's usually a case of a damn portal plug being incompatible or something... i don't have a printer for mine. it's too busy being hacked... a lot of firms have cottoned on to the fact some of their hardware outlasts built in obsolescence... and they keep their software downloads for public consumption. which is cool of them. it's appreciated etc etc etc... who hasn't been pissed off cos the perfectly reasonable scanner or printer, now out of stock and no longer manufactured, still works and has no desire to pack up and die an inglorious built in obsolete death...as he or she scampers about trynna locate the software for it which was wiped from the computer after clearing it's cache and history????? anyhow.... yeah, old computers do have nostalgia about them and retro gaming is still nice to engage with. i found old pacman and space invaders on line - free to play.... . takes me back somewhat....

[@JulianOrchardfan]

Lovely Lesley, seems odd not seeing her with messrs Noakes and Purves and a pet of some kind lol.

[@wisteela]

Commodore PET, maybe?

[@harddriven1344]

"Get down Shep"

[@ScottGrammer]

The three basic parts of a printer are the plastic case, the jammed paper tray, and the blinking red light.

[@spidyman8853]

Thank God for the revolution in technology. Printers were well expensive back then.

[@whiteonggoy7009]

Cheap now but the ink omg

[@justinklenk]

Seriously, they were - but then - yeah, to think that they got off EASY with that expensive upfront cost, compared to the ink-cartridges ball and chain we live with in the future. 😅

[@plechaim]

Better build quality the new inkjets are very flimsy

[@absoluteacw]

I recall a time when it was cheaper to discard a printer and buy a new one with ink as the ink was too expensive and more than a printer?!

[@TerryJonesPrinterRepairs]

@@absoluteacw That has never been the case you just fell for a sales gimmick and never run the maths.

[@jakedeane5304]

People on tv were so much more eloquent back then

[@mipmipmipmipmip-v5x]

It went wrong on the 1990s, when every camera shot had to be diagonal with quick zoom in & out

[@Enjay001]

To add to that: factual programmes used to be made on the premise that people watching them might actually be interested in the content. (Foolish, I know. 🙄) Therefore, you could get someone, an expert, speaking authoritatively to camera about their knowledge and it would be interesting because of that person's knowledge. Nowadays, it has be be attention grabbing, with bangs, flashes, "funny" quips, weird angles, bright colours, and "relatability" - all because the audience are not trusted to simply be interested in what is being communicated or to maintain their focus for more than a few seconds. The saddest part is that the TV people might be right. ☹ Allied to the above, I've also noticed how the focus is often shifted away from what is apparently being shown and making the presenter the centre and "personality" of the programme. Nature documentaries, in particular, often feature the presenter front-and-centre telling you about how excited/scared/cold/hot/tired they are; what an amazing experience it is for them to see things up close etc etc. It's all about them and not what the programme claims to be about. I'm sorry, I don't care about your privileged celebrity experience; just show me the interesting stuff and give me information about it. Sir David Attenborough is possibly the last person still doing it "oldschool" (and brilliantly).

[@gan9e]

every1 ganster now init bro, i be an ipad baby but i still bring the rukus know what i mean bruv

[@mark3464]

What

[@TheCatLady65]

I remeber getting a printer for my ZX Spectrum. One of the greatest days of my life!

[@Innesb]

I’ve still got a genuine Sinclair thermal printer with a paper roll. I doubt it works many more. Haven’t turned my original Speccy for about 10 years.

[@ajay999999]

what a great life u had

[@andyg208]

I remember the feint smoke as it burns off the aluminum top layer. Oh and the finger prints!

[@niceguy235uk1]

"Never play leapfrog with a unicorn" 🤣

[@justinklenk]

That was awesome. 😅 If only I knew that yesterday...

[@Zadster]

All broadcast live too! Great times.

[@Richard-gl7xu]

I started my career 34 years ago repairing such devices, typewriters, printers, fax machines photocopiers, using some of this technology, seems an EON ago now but I loved it.

[@wisteela]

Fantastic. Great bit of history. I actually want a modern dot matrix printer. Yes, you can still buy them. Please, BBC Archive, upload the modem segment.

[@Pedro8k]

We also had very heavy golf ball printers for business line printers way before laser or ink jet printers came out

[@gwheregwhizz]

You know you have made it in life when you can buy a Rolex, a Rolls Royce, and an inkjet cartridge without looking at the price.

[@BsktImp]

For my sins, had an Amstrad DMP-1. A screen dump must have taken half an hour lol. I remember dad used to bring home stacks of old tractor feed fan-fold paper lined with faint little green 'music staves'.

[@wisteela]

That paper was actually called music ruled.

[@farfromberlin]

Had an Epson in early 90s (as a student) and must say they were very very good quality B&W dot matrix prints and super cheap to run with a ribbon.

[@pit_stop77]

Ohhh it was so complicated back then 😮

[@chadbrown748]

I remember dot matrix printers. I also remember in school, tearing off the perforated strips of the printer paper with the holes in them and making paper springs out of them.

[@UnexpectedBooks]

Such tender memories of having an office across the hall from a daisy wheel printer. Listening to that machine gun all day long. But the print was beautiful!

[@bonnetdedouche437]

Me: I don't need a printer. It's 2024! Amazon Returns: I beg to differ... Me: I wonder if John next door has a printer? John: I wonder if Bill next door has a printer?

[@DixieDaydreamer]

My dad had a Juki 6800 printer at home, it was like sitting in a warzone when he had a 20 page document to print off! First tech job I had in the early 1990s we had Fiery colour laser printers on every office floor, £12k a pop but the quality was absolutely stunning, plus they were colour photocopiers too. Cost about £1 a sheet every time we printed stuff.

[@garrylawless3550]

This takes me back, oh how I wanted a nice printer when I had my spectrum! Not the choice you have today, and they were very expensive. Thanks for uploading.👍🏻

[@markderoller7645]

Had an Epson RX80 on my Apple II+ growing up. Great reliable printer.

[@rkgaustin]

Wonky G's is a cool 80's electronica band name.

[@RetroJack]

I was quite happy when I got my first 9-pin printer, it was a huge step up!

[@jjcoolaus]

That's a shame I wanted to hear John talk about modems. These two are a great pairing

[@FifthKingdom]

1:24, That’s some deep text for a printer demonstration 😂

[@AchtungEnglander]

After seeing Threads, Lesley Judd just reminds me of the end of the world!

[@Progressive_Canadian]

Time travel back and walk up to these guys with a colour laser printer just to watch the reaction.

[@watchawant8309]

A jumper and a bow tie....gotta love the 80's fashion😂

[@Tomsonic41]

I remember my dad having a daisy wheel printer back in the late 1980s. Later on I got one of those dot matrix printers so I could print myself from the ZX Spectrum.

[@johnsbox]

I still use a printer, with a scan and fax too. A few friends come over to me if they want to use it.

[@bulletsie]

I remember having a 9pin dot matrix printer and its was HEAVY as if they weighed it down with concrete! you could hear it across the entire house. Back then it was very rare for anyone to have a PC, 9600bps model, a dotmatrix printer and something called packratt was popular for the nerdy types and getting a DX processor instead of an SX

[@djdrwatson]

Printer prices have dropped substantially since then, so manufacturers have started charging rip off prices for ink for their printers this century.

[@ismayb754]

And they seem to be programmed to tell you that you need new ink when there's still plenty left.

[@breakfasthole]

It's the razor and blades pricing model. Sell the big thing cheap (sometimes at a loss) but make much more money on the other essential items you need to buy over and over again. But you're right, they've had to find ways of lowering production costs. £3k for that laser printer is over £9k in todays money! They were never going to sell in big numbers, even to businesses.

[@djdrwatson]

@@ismayb754 Some printers 'complain' (or worse don't recognise) cheaper, non genuine ink cartridges when you try to use them.

[@djdrwatson]

@@breakfasthole The high cost of printer ink is one of the biggest computer scams of recent times. Official printer ink per litre actually works out to be £1000s. It is sometimes cheaper to throw the printer away and get a new one than it is to buy all new genuine ink for it.

[@breakfasthole]

@@djdrwatson You're right. They keep making it more difficult to use unofficial ink too. For consumers, the convenience of having a home printer is very costly (albeit, much less costly than the 80s). It's why businesses now hire printers and local print services still exist.

[@Oldgamingfart]

Philips had a telly out at around that time that actually had a little thermal printer built-in,, allowing for the printing of Teletext pages! I recall the BBC even used them behind the scenes in their news and sports departments..

[@caeserromero3013]

We got an Oki laser printer in 1990. It was much the same size as the HP here...

[@frothe42]

Goodness, we have come a long way in forty years.

[@johnpoile1451]

I believe it's Lesley's birthday on the 20th of December. Happy Birthday.

[@jeffreywoods4040]

I had no idea daisy wheel printers cost so much more than dot matrix at any point!

[@ruk2023--]

Brings back memories of a stream of 7, 8 and 24 pin dot matrix printers waking me up in the 80's and 90's from my dad's office when he was printing some bible length copy before 9am. I don't even know where he got long things to print before the internet.

[@grayrabbit2211]

We had that exact same laser printer at my dad's accounting practice. At tax time, it ran 24/7, with an intern charged with keeping it going

[@mecharoo]

I swear you can still hear those dot matrix printers at airline check in counters 😂

[@universal70]

Printer loo roll a very accurate description

[@AtheistOrphan]

The £500 cost of one of the printers works out at £1,591.73 today. (According to the Bank of England inflation calculator).

[@comput3rman77]

So by that calculation, the laser printer cost over 10,000

[@AtheistOrphan]

@ - Yes, that sounds about right. Check out the cost of the Apple Lisa when first released!

[@dunebasher1971]

Yep, printers were an expensive peripheral. Epsons were around £350 in the mid-80s, which was roughly double the cost of the average home computer. I remember when the Mannesmann-Tally MT-80+ was released at £160 in about 1985, it was a real price breakthrough for a decent dot-matrix.

[@christyrer9530]

A printer can be had for less than £99 today; that was a lot of money 40 years ago. I remember that my Saturday job was £1.25 an hour!!

[@billsterbry]

Also monchrome lasers are about £100 now, with colour lasers around £300.

[@4879daniel]

Printers can be had for £40. Problem is the ink costs as much as gold

[@Coolcarting]

@@4879daniel Which is less than £99, like he said.

[@tjfSIM]

Yes, made me laugh when she said they were cheap and cheerful! £165 in 1984 was not cheap by any standards!

[@bulletsie]

1000 bucks for my inkjet and about 750 bucks to change the inks! then again there are 12 inks a maintenence cartridge but it will print all the way to A2 if I was made enough to waste the ink.

[@mikebowers7161]

Ah Lesley Judd!! I had a massive crush on her when I was young!!

[@nickthelick]

God I remember the days during the late 1980s, through the 1990s and into the first couple of years of the new millennium, when it meant that you pretty much HAD TO HAVE a printer for your school work, college work, work work, writing letters which you never did anyway! And so on... 🤔😄😉 And then one day all of a sudden you could just save your stuff quickly virtually anywhere and if need be you can just Send the file straight to the nearest printer thanks to Bluetooth and/or to the nearest network of PCs that obviously have a Bluetooth connection occasionally... Er anyway, whatever...! 🤷🏻‍♂️😄 Oh yeah, I almost forgot to finish with, - So yeah, one day all of a sudden you could send pretty much any file you had, directly to a printer and it would queue it and print it immediately. No more twiddling with wires just Bluetooth picks it up and then gets online easily enough (most of the time)!

[@nickthelick]

I had two dot matrix printers, one huge and one smaller. Then moved onto Inkjet printer by the time I was in college (1995) and then printers went up in quality and down in price, in the early/mid 2000s. Which brings me to now and I still use this printer, answer machine, fax machine, oh and it prints proper high quality digital pics if you have the specific type of paper. Anyway, it's a fokkin' reet, greet printah, that hus lasted fifteen years. Aye, nearly twentay yirs ackshully, mun!

[@UncleFeedle]

In the early 90s, I used a dot-matrix Epson to print my own train tickets. 🤣

[@petesmitt]

You appear proud of your criminal fraud..

[@MatthewLenton]

Wonky GS? I'm more concerned that hierarchy is spelt incorrectly

[@carlosaugustosilva5343]

lol

[@RWL2012]

I'm concerned that you typed GS rather than Gs.

[@yorkshireitguys1418]

I still have my original printer a Panasonic KX-P1080 and it still works today although I am not sure where to buy the ribbons from.

[@andydixon2980]

It's like looking back at the stoneage.

[@BillyNoMates1974]

technically the daisy wheel printer worked like a stone and chisel. lol

[@rztrzt]

Wait until they see the price of inkjet cartridges....

[@karimkamel4295]

ahhh lesley judd...

[@Stratoszero]

Yes so many posts about printers? They seem to be missing the obvious attraction.

[@trevorbrown6654]

That £3000 printer would cost about £9500 now when adjusted for inflation. I had an Amstrad NC200 notebook word processor which had a built in drive and parallel printer port. My first printer was a Panasonic KXP 2135 dot matrix back in 1994 and it lasted me 7 years. It was slow by modern standards and noisy but reliable and the results were actually pretty good (better than seen here) and got me through college and university, costing me about £200 at the time but proved to be worth it as I could print my own work t home rather than have to sit in the uni computer rooms. I seem to recall my choices back then were inkjet, dot matrix or laser. Inkjet had a reputation for being unreliable in those days and laser too expensive. I'm guessing daisywheel was off the market by then for some reason and i think thermal printers were a bit of a niche thing.

[@pit_stop77]

3k for a printer when £2ph might have your average wage in 1984

[@mikeroberts942]

That's roughly the equivalent of nine and a half thousand pounds in today's money!

[@justinklenk]

​@@mikeroberts942 I'd suspect more like northward of 15k. 😮

[@andrewrussell4707]

Was the average wage earner the sort of person who would have the need to buy a printer in 1984? I can remember my hourly rate in 1976 as being £3:50. So perhaps your figures are slightly low?

[@CT-vm4gf]

And people complain about the cost of an iPad or laptop these days!

[@plechaim]

@@andrewrussell4707you were well paid. The minimum wage brought in 20 years later was only £3.60

[@spidyman8853]

I got my 1st Desktop PC and printer back in the 90s and taught myself

[@zunaidkajee4540]

"wonky Gs" 😂

[@bob23301]

For the kids our there, a laser printer way back in 1984 was the ps6 of its day,

[@kinocchio]

The host is really good

[@magicknight8412]

Half my life i had a dot matrix printer, then inkjet and eventually I got a colour laser printer. For free. Somebody was giving it away as it was "broken", took it home pulled out the paper blocking it and now I have the best printer I have ever had for free.

[@dean6816]

There was an inkjet printer in 1984 called the HP thinkjet

[@a1white]

Printers. Causing us hell since 1984

[@bardo0007]

Funny that we never print out on paper anymore, when I worked in the business we sold tons of ink printers and laser printers, in both color and b/w. Maybe it's not a good thing, if our digital footprints disappear in the future.

[@Andrew-kl5qc]

I still have a Juki 6100 in its original box. Any takers?

[@eliotmansfield]

Epson rx80 was a stalwart of printing along with microlines

[@cdl0]

£100 in 1984 is equivalent to about £318 in 2024. Veronica Explains channel on KZbin loves dot matrix printers and so do I. I wrote my own printer drivers back in the day.

[@bbltix]

Screen-what??

[@kevinbush4300]

0:13... 1984: "It IS bewildering!" Now... you might want to fasten your seat belts.

[@zyanoe]

A common conversation back then: Q: "Is xxx compatible with yyy?" A: "No."

[@leegriffin1584]

Only just (40 odd years late to the party) understood the owl at the beginning.

[@phrtao]

40 years later and people never like you to admit that you have a printer, especially if it is actually functional. The only thing worse is to have a functioning scanner !

[@BillyNoMates1974]

Phwar, Dot matrix or Daisy wheels. you know you had money if you could afford a printer. you was a made millionaire back then

[@SchwarzeBananen]

My first printer was 9 needles, I've missed that wonky 7 pin machine.

[@WilVincent88]

Back in the 80s, we didn't need a 'Other brands are available' line it seems then!

[@ruk2023--]

Because they weren't 😀

[@Stigstigster]

The band "Rage Against the Machine" never actually specified which machine they were raging against but my money would be on it being a printer.

[@atakd]

£160 cheap and cheerful in 1984? Today a colour inkjet is £12 at 1984 prices.

[@tjm3900]

I wonder if any could say "Trouble communicating with printer"

[@wpl955g9]

01:26 - 'oh, looks like there's something wrong there...' HIERARCHY mispelled? 'Wonky Gs!' Nevermind....

[@safirahmed]

A mono laser printer cost about £5,000 in 1985 about £15,136 in November 2024.

[@BulacanUMNChannel34]

EPSON TM-U220

[@richard-davies]

I stopped using inkjets over a decade ago and will never touch them again. Always clogging up especially if you don’t print for a week or two. Honestly surprised Inkjets are still around as they are a crap technology. Bought a colour wireless later 12 years ago new for £170, only changed the toners once and even left it months between prints and up until last month the print quality was as good as day one. Would have gone through over a dozen Inkjets in that time easily due to clogs. Bought a new wireless colour laser recently and should get many more years out of it hopefully. It's about time we let Inkjet printers die out.

[@LeedsInAHat]

Epson, Canon, Olivetti. They'll never last....

[@JohnBrooke-g3u]

All these decades later and my g is no longer wonky

[@r4zi3lgintoro65]

laser printers? that will never catch on in home....

[@scooterinthewoods2662]

inkjet has entered the chat

[@ismayb754]

​​@scooterinthewoods2662 and left the chat again. A home laser printer is way more economical than an inkjet. For a slightly more expensive initial outlay, no more fussing with expensive cartridges that say they are out of ink after printing 3 pages or dry if you have dared to not use your printer for a few weeks. Oh and let's not forget how they love to use up all your ink printing a full page of graphics telling you that you have no ink left 😂😂😂 biggest ripoffs in technology.

[@Smithy225]

My how times have changed

[@tpeddle]

How is it still possible to hear a CRT's whine through a KZbin video - My ears!!

[@TheEulerID]

Now adjust those prices for inflation. That "cheap" Epson dot matrix would cost almost £1,000 in 2024 money. The (monochrome) HP laser printer is the equivalent of almost £10,000. In the meantime, I have an incredibly capable Brother laser (well, technically LED) all in one printer/scanner that does double sided colour printing (and scanning) for less than 5% of the cost of that HP laser printer. We forget how expensive computing used to be.

[@N7DRONES]

Now hardly any one prints a thing

[@JasmineSurrealVideos]

Take your computer in the shop when you are going to buy a printer lol, those great whacking things, yeah, I'll just sling it in my tote bag and walk down the high street with a ton of computer weight! What a stupid thing to say.

[@djpray2k]

Just take the cable?

[@charleswhitney3235]

I got a used laser printer for £30 off ebay a year ago.

[@mikepanchaud1]

We had a Bob Marley printer, it kept jamin'.

[@RolandoRatas]

Fact: Lesley Judd wrote the script for the 'Office Printer' scene in movie 'Office Space'.

[@justinklenk]

Fascinating.

[@DenkyManner]

The question on everyone's lips: is that a wig?

[@DjD1MAH]

i wonder how many people dragged there computers to the high street to make sure the printer they want actually work

[@Hdtjdjbszh]

printers mustve been the one piece of technology that have consistently gotten worse and less consumer friendly

[@BulacanUMNChannel34]

HI-PRECISION Diagnostics

[@rkgaustin]

R.I.P. Joan Rivers

[@hoilst265]

God created computers, Satan created printers.

[@pauljones8135]

Size of thrm printers look like a vhs betamax