MPS 803

The MPS 803 is a 7- pin printer from the Commodore company from the MPS series , which was brought onto the market in 1985. The matrix printer was operated with continuous paper and printed with a 7x6 matrix at 10 characters per inch and 60 characters per second. The printer was capable of bidirectional printing; it was not developed and built by Commodore itself, but by the company Both, who produced an almost identical Centronics printer, the NLQ4.

The MPS 803 was supplied by Commodore in two versions, one in the typical brown and one for the 264 series in black. In contrast to the MPS 801 , the printer can use normal single pages. The printer could not create descenders, this was only possible later through software tricks. Otherwise, all letters with descenders have simply been raised and hovered above the rest of the word. The interface to the computer was the CBM bus , a proprietary serial variant of IEEE-488 . The printer was capable of graphics, so it could print graphics as well as text. In addition to the complete ASCII character set, he was also able to print all Commodore graphic characters, barring and negative writing was also possible.

The paper feed of the MPS 803 was intended for single sheets and continuous roll paper, because there was no paper guide or tractor drive . A tractor drive had to be bought.

Technical specifications

Printing method: Matrix printing (Impact Dot Matrix)
Character matrix: 6 × 7 dot matrix
Character size: Height: 2.4mm; Width 2.2 mm
Width: 6 × 7 dot matrix
Line length: max. 80 columns
Line spacing: DIP switches: 6 lines / inch or 8 lines / inch (1 inch = 2.54 cm)
Print speed: 60 characters / sec.
Printing method: bidirectional printing
Paper transport: single pages or optional spiked roller drive
Ribbon type: KMP ribbon, black nylon
Paper width: A4, Letter and optionally continuous paper 4.0 to 10 inches wide
Copies / carbon copies: original + 2 carbon copies
Graphics: Point addressable, 7 vertical points / column, 480 points horizontal
CPU: NEC µPD7811G, 128 bytes RAM, 10 MHz
4 KB ROM (2732 EPROM )
Power consumption: 8 W idle, 30 W pressure
Weight: approx. 2.0 kg
Price: approx. 550 marks (year 1985), plus 100 marks for tractor drive

Device address

The device address is set to 4 by default. The value from 4 to 11 can be selected via three jumpers on the circuit board.

Web links

Article about the MPS 803 in the C64 Wiki
Commodore matrix printer MPS-803 operating manual
User guide MPS 803 , English
MPS 803 , zimmers.net, English
Magazine 64'er - Issue 11/85, MPS 803 - A printer for all occasions ?, page 40