My first printer was a Panasonic KX-P1124 I loved that thing.. I only stopped using it (no longer have it) in 1999 after the ribbon was hard to find locally.
I still have my KX-P2135 that I bought in 1995. The color kit was optional back then, but I bought one. Everything still works on it. All I had to do was order in a new color ribbon, and it prints like new. I use it on my old Apple II machines! It also worked in Linux, printing a faithful reproduction of the Ubuntu printer test page.
In 1995 when this printer came out, no computers had USB, because it was not invented until 1996 and the standard that defined it's proper implementation didn't come out until 1997. It didn't become popular until about 98 or 99.
Back when you could buy new color ribbon, it wasn't bad at color photos.. but you could still see the lines where the print head went back and forth. It prints much better color graphic than photos. Photos also took FOREVER to print.
Loved this video. A friend of mine was asking me to install a new network in his home and he has this bad boy. For the life of me I can't seem to install either of the IBM pin graphics. If there is any suggestions you can give, please let me know! Thanks for posting this video either way!!
I have not tried this yet... but I've been told, if you change the driver in windows to Generic Text only. It will print in the printer's native format in one pass and bi-directional. The reason I haven't changed mine is, that it's printing in Near Letter Quality. Which looks better than dot-matrix text.
I just re-watched your MX-80 video, and then I came here. Comparing this to the old MX-80, I feel like I just came out of the dark ages and entered the Renaissance! lol Is the KX-P2135 any good at printing color photographs? I've never had a color dot-matrix impact printer.
Devin.....I have the same one as well that I bought long ago, paid $49.95 NEW in the 80's, still works Great!! I Re-Ink the cartridges using regular printer ink, but you have to take the cartridge apart carefully! Also, I can't get mine to print faster! I have windows XP using a parallel port. When it prints it goes over each character twice, which makes it print longer and slower. Any ideas to make it faster? I even still have the 3.5 disk it came with! Any ideas?
There are several online sources. Businesses still use dot-matrix printers. So they still make the ribbons for them. But usually you have to order a certain quantity. I think I had to order 6 ribbons to make an order.
Have you ever had problems with it not knowing where the print head was? I..,e ours (part of a piece of an old instrument that we are trying to revive), wants to go all the way to left and then tries to print from there, which gives an error as it tries to print to the left but is stopped by the side of the printer.
Two Herbs Kinda sounds like the print head is binding on the guide rail. You can try cleaning and oiling the rail that the print head rides on and see if that fixes it. Or there’s a bad “End of Page” switch inside the print area. But my first guess would a good cleaning is needed.
@@kaiyoshi2243 I'll try it, but I think its something more. When I start it, it goes to the center whrer its supposed to be, but when it tries to print it escapes to the very left side and tries to print to the left of the carriage, and of course jams.
Two Herbs If you can make the printer print a diagnostic page, that will at least tell you if its the printer’s fault or the computer you are using. Sometimes the computer can send bad data and cause this. Those little “end of page or homing” switches almost never go bad. But thats a possibility too. When you first turn the printer on it uses those switches to “find” the print head and know where it is. They’re little micro switches. Some printer have them on the print head and others are on either the left or right side print area. Thats how the printer knows where the print head is. If those are bad, then the printer has no idea and no way ti figure out where the print head is. If you notice in this video when I first turn the printer on, the print head moves left. Hits the switch and returns to the center. Now the printer knows where the print head is. It should not hit that switch again. If it does, that means something blocked the print head and knocked it out of alignment. If you can find the user manual, that will tell you how to put the printer in diagnostic mode, which will print all the ASCII characters continuously. Most manuals can be found with a good google search.
Two Herbs This all also assumes that you have the printer’s DIP switches set correctly for the computer you are using. Remember, plug’n play didn’t exist in the 90’s and earlier. That user manual will help you there too.
My first printer was a Panasonic KX-P1124 I loved that thing.. I only stopped using it (no longer have it) in 1999 after the ribbon was hard to find locally.
I still have my KX-P2135 that I bought in 1995. The color kit was optional back then, but I bought one. Everything still works on it. All I had to do was order in a new color ribbon, and it prints like new. I use it on my old Apple II machines! It also worked in Linux, printing a faithful reproduction of the Ubuntu printer test page.
In 1995 when this printer came out, no computers had USB, because it was not invented until 1996 and the standard that defined it's proper implementation didn't come out until 1997. It didn't become popular until about 98 or 99.
Back when you could buy new color ribbon, it wasn't bad at color photos.. but you could still see the lines where the print head went back and forth. It prints much better color graphic than photos. Photos also took FOREVER to print.
The start up sounds like an apple image writer ii
Loved this video. A friend of mine was asking me to install a new network in his home and he has this bad boy. For the life of me I can't seem to install either of the IBM pin graphics. If there is any suggestions you can give, please let me know! Thanks for posting this video either way!!
I have not tried this yet... but I've been told, if you change the driver in windows to Generic Text only. It will print in the printer's native format in one pass and bi-directional.
The reason I haven't changed mine is, that it's printing in Near Letter Quality. Which looks better than dot-matrix text.
I just re-watched your MX-80 video, and then I came here. Comparing this to the old MX-80, I feel like I just came out of the dark ages and entered the Renaissance! lol
Is the KX-P2135 any good at printing color photographs? I've never had a color dot-matrix impact printer.
@ictdude1 I agree. It's very close to the ImageWriter II.
yeah, I have to order the ink ribbons now. and they don't make the color ribbons anymore. However, i was able to find some color ribbons on ebay.
Devin.....I have the same one as well that I bought long ago, paid $49.95 NEW in the 80's, still works Great!! I Re-Ink the cartridges using regular printer ink, but you have to take the cartridge apart carefully! Also, I can't get mine to print faster! I have windows XP using a parallel port. When it prints it goes over each character twice, which makes it print longer and slower. Any ideas to make it faster? I even still have the 3.5 disk it came with! Any ideas?
This printer will work with Windows 7. We used a USB to LPT port cable. Not hard to find them.
Great video! But where on Earth can you still get ribbon cartridges for printers like these?!
There are several online sources. Businesses still use dot-matrix printers. So they still make the ribbons for them. But usually you have to order a certain quantity. I think I had to order 6 ribbons to make an order.
how did you get this printer to work on window 7? I'm trying to do connect my Kx-p2135 to my windows 7.
Have you ever had problems with it not knowing where the print head was? I..,e ours (part of a piece of an old instrument that we are trying to revive), wants to go all the way to left and then tries to print from there, which gives an error as it tries to print to the left but is stopped by the side of the printer.
Two Herbs Kinda sounds like the print head is binding on the guide rail. You can try cleaning and oiling the rail that the print head rides on and see if that fixes it. Or there’s a bad “End of Page” switch inside the print area. But my first guess would a good cleaning is needed.
@@kaiyoshi2243 I'll try it, but I think its something more. When I start it, it goes to the center whrer its supposed to be, but when it tries to print it escapes to the very left side and tries to print to the left of the carriage, and of course jams.
Two Herbs If you can make the printer print a diagnostic page, that will at least tell you if its the printer’s fault or the computer you are using. Sometimes the computer can send bad data and cause this.
Those little “end of page or homing” switches almost never go bad. But thats a possibility too. When you first turn the printer on it uses those switches to “find” the print head and know where it is. They’re little micro switches. Some printer have them on the print head and others are on either the left or right side print area. Thats how the printer knows where the print head is. If those are bad, then the printer has no idea and no way ti figure out where the print head is. If you notice in this video when I first turn the printer on, the print head moves left. Hits the switch and returns to the center. Now the printer knows where the print head is. It should not hit that switch again. If it does, that means something blocked the print head and knocked it out of alignment.
If you can find the user manual, that will tell you how to put the printer in diagnostic mode, which will print all the ASCII characters continuously. Most manuals can be found with a good google search.
Two Herbs This all also assumes that you have the printer’s DIP switches set correctly for the computer you are using. Remember, plug’n play didn’t exist in the 90’s and earlier. That user manual will help you there too.
@@kaiyoshi2243 Thanks for the advice. Tried another RS232 connected printer and it worked fine, thus will try to see about this.
Wouldn't exactly call that quiet, even compared to other dot matrix printers :)
Try Generic Text
Or IBM 24 or 9 pin graphics