Ian's Retro Museum
Retro Printers

A look at the printers I have in my collection

Printing with style while making a hard copy of your finest work, maybe if you were lucky your parents put it on the fridge for all to see

I did have a printer with my Amiga, I think it was an Citizen dot-matrix type printer. I swapped a dashboard for a Mk1 Ford Fiesta for it. I can't remember what model it was although it was very loud. It eventually got thrown out because it was rubbish, and I never had any paper or ink for it.

I also had an HP Deskjet, it was also rubbish, as are all HP printers.

Yes, I said it!

There are 6 printers in the museum

Commodore MPS 803



I was recently donated a printer, this is a Commodore MPS 803 printer and was the official printer for the Vic 20 and 64, the user manual shows a line drawing of a Vic 20 in the connection diagram, but it works with all the 8 bit Commodore home computers. Later there was a charcoal black version to match the C16 and Plus 4 computers, but it was the same printer with the same model number. In it's day it was regarded as a slow printer and it did not come with the tractor feed assembly which was an optional extra

GameBoy Camera and Printer



We only popped into the shop to shelter from the rain, it looked like it was a general second-hand shop, but it contained lots of retro gaming goodies, although it was mostly stuff I already had. It was a great little shop in Spalding, Lincolnshire, and everywhere you looked there was more and more retro gaming greatness tucked in behind old DVD players and other cheap tat

Apple StyleWriter II



This is an Apple StyleWriter II, it's Apple's 2nd ink jet printer, it's based on a Canon mechanism and was faster than it's predecessor

Sinclair ZX Printer



I acquired a ZX Printer with one of my ZX81's, I have no idea if it works, they usually need a belt replacing, and the special paper is tricky to get, so I expect this will be in the untested pile for a while. This printer could work with the ZX80/ZX81, and the Spectrum

Hewlett Packard Deskjet 500



HP Deskjet 500, I had a similar printer to this back in the day, it was crap

Canon BJC-250 Color Bubble Jet Printer



I found a printer, it's a Canon BJC-250 Color Bubble Jet Printer, no idea if it works, this is possibly the printer that Apple "borrowed" to make the Stylewriter II, it all looks the same internally and the ports are in the same places etc

The dark area

I hope you all find this as interesting and as nostalgic as I do.

And if you do, why not check out the next page in my retro museum... Projects

Or to quicky jump to another room of the museum, click or tap on Rooms at the bottom of this screen

Special thanks to my long-suffering partner Denise for putting up with all this "nonsense".

No cats were unnecessarily annoyed during the creation of this site

Did I just see a dog outside?



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