Re: missing lines on Image Writer

[Mitchell Spector <mitch2gs@hotmail.com>]

"Guillaume Tello" <houten.van@wanadoo.fr> wrote:

>Hi,
>
>something strange happens with my Image Writer:
>
>- when printing in text mode, the lower part of lower case letters is not 
>printed (for letters such as p, j, g, y) (with MouseText or MouseCalc)
>
>I said to myself: one pin is broken, and I have some missing lines.
>
>- in graphical mode, the screen is correctly printed and no missing lines 
>are noted.
>
>here is a scan: http://perso.wanadoo.fr/gtello/iwriter.gif
>
>on the upper part you can see the word "augmentation" with a trucated g, the 
>same with the "y" in "moyenne".
>
>but, in the lower part, the screen copy, the first column is perfectly 
>black, so no lines are missing.

    Try the built-in ImageWriter II self-test. With paper ready, turn on the
printer while holding down the 'Form Feed" button (last button on panel).
It should report some basic information followed by several lines of ASCII
test characters--alphanumeric, special characters, Mousetext. You don't
even need the printer connected to the computer to run the test. Does 
the problem show up here? That's important.

    Next I'd check the set of DIP switches under the top cover, to the left.
Specifically the first three switches should probably be set to French,
which is: Open, Closed, Closed (American default is: Open, Open, Open).
Rather doubtful you accidentally moved a switch, unless you were trying
to clean your printer.

    Another possibility is the print head pins are clogged or dirty. You can
remove it (it's fairly trivial I remember) and clean it. There was actually
an article in the premier issue of II Alive magazine (issue #1, page 24) 
with step by step instructions, but I vaguely remember not agreeing with 
the method used to clean it. I'm jumping the gun here though, try the 
self test first and see what happens...

Mitchell Spector