Dot-Matrix Printer

Popular dot-matrix printer: Commodore MPS-801.

A dot-matrix printer is a printer that uses needles striking a colour ribbon (often black or blue) to print text and graphics in matrix printing on paper. It is available from about 7 needles or pins, popular in the home computer sector in the 1980s were the printer models with 8 or 9 pins, and a little later with 24 pins.

The following printer modes are available:

Draft (normal computer mode) - fast printing mode, single printing, often with lower pins, e.g. 8 or 9 pins.
NLQ (Near Letter Quality) - double printing than in draft mode
LQ (Letter Quality) (only up at 24 pins or more)

Some dot-matrix printers has additional adjustable or built-in fonts (or character sets; e.g. Courier, Pica, Elite, Prestige-Elite, ITC-Souvenir, Bold-P.S.Times-P.S., Hevelette P.S, Draft-Gothic, Sans Serif, Roman) or font formatting such as big letters, wide font, bold, italics (cursive), underline, strikethrough, condensed, expanded, emphasized, superscript, subscript, shadow, outlined or lombination. Also the character pitch and line spacing could be adjusted.

Very important for Commodore users are the compatibility of a printer type like Epson FX, because a lot of software use the Epson specifics printer commands (ASCII escape characters).