TEC Model F10 Daisywheel Printer on Windows 10

[bolex]

I picked up a Daisywheel printer (I know it's ridiculous) the other day. It was $10 and it appeared to be unused in original box with manual. I don't have a daisywheel so I thought it would be fun to play with. So I took it home, plugged in to my Windows 10 system, installed the "Generic Text" printer driver and it sprang to life. I seriously doubt it's ever been used.

Anyways, there is a problem. The majority of characters print out just fine, but there are about 7 characters on screen that will not print correctly. These are the on screen characters and the characters that are printed instead:

` = °
~ = ™
^ = ©
\ = ®
{ = §
} = †
| = ¶

What would be the cause of this? Do I have the wrong Daisywheel installed? Is there any kind of mapping I can do to fix this or is this a lost cause?

 

[mark0x01]

It's been a long time since I setup one, but the wheel sets the font and character set.
The manual may give the ascii to character mapping or see if it has a self test mode to print them all.

 

[djg]

Anyways, there is a problem. The majority of characters print out just fine, but there are about 7 characters on screen that will not print correctly.

What would be the cause of this? Do I have the wrong Daisywheel installed? Is there any kind of mapping I can do to fix this or is this a lost cause?

Looks at the wheel and see if it has the characters that are missing. Likely it doesn't have them so you will need to get a different wheel.

 

[bolex]

So the characters on the left don't exist at all on the wheel. So it's probably working as designed. You can't print a character that does not exist.

 

[bolex]

After reading the manual (unbelievable I know) , the back few pages describe a few common wheels. It looks like, based on those descriptions, that the Diablo Courier 10 wheel is the wheel that matches up closest with the text only Microsoft printer driver for this printer. Many of the wheels had alternate characters. There is really only so much you can do when you only have 96 characters to work with. I've ordered this wheel and I think I should be good to go.

 

[bolex]

I did get the Diablo Courier Daisy Wheel and the printer now prints all keyboard characters. That solved the issue. Pretty amazing to see such an old printer work with a modern OS.

https://imgur.com/UJnCMpy

 

[tradde]

I think for $10 I'd have bought it too.