If you saw the reviews of the PR2300 when it was introduced several years ago, you know that the original list price was about four times more than it was finally sold for by various discount houses. The reviews also rated some of its features as being well worth the price, such as outstanding graphic capabilities, fast and quiet operation, good quality output, and rugged construction. A unique feature is that instead of print-wires being driven against a ribbon as in other dot-matrix printers, an electrical charge fires dots at the paper from economical ink ampules. When an ampule is replaced it is the same as having a new printing head. After discontinuing production, Olivetti has been less than helpful with documentation. Since neither the T/S computer nor the PR2300 closely follow the nominal standards more or less accepted by a major part of the industry, many have experienced considerable frustration in trying to realize the potential of mating the two, particularly in the plotting of graphics. I do not personally own a PR2300 but have spent some time using one. After an entire afternoon of trying to adapt the example listing shown in the manual so it would plot two tiny triangles, I finally discovered there was an error in their listing. Fortunately, there is now help on the horizon in the person of William J. Pedersen of the WIDJUP Co. A retired aerospace engineer, he has unraveled the secrets of the PR2300 (and also has developed some unique bank-switching techniques for the TS2068). He has a large catalog of other utility programs for TS1000/2068s. Pedersen’s WINKJET 1 is designed specifically for the PR2300/TS2068 combination. A relocatable 157-byte printer module is included, with pre-defined options for the TASMAN A and B and AERCO interfaces. Provisions for customizing it to any other I.F. as well as output to the TS2040 or Alphacom printers are also included. After loading the program, prompts guide you step by step through the initiation of the module for your interface. This data is saved and may then be merged and used with other programs such as those needed to produce high-resolution drawings and graphics or text on the screen to be copied. WINKJET supports LPRINT to drive your printer directly, using the resident font, and makes it easy to access all PR2300 commands, as any printer driver should. Its greatest strength, however, lies in the ability not only to copy exactly whatever is on the screen but to selectively scan the DFILE1 (and DFILE2 if it is in use) by means of user-defined “windows.” It will then send data in proper order to the printer for it to graphically plot to paper whatever it finds there, whether it be normal T/S characters, user-defined fonts, UDGs, graphic plots, or any combination of these. These windows may be used to correctly position up to the maximum of 110 characters per line, or to scan a single row of pixels at a time as set by your PLOT, DRAW, or UDG routines for the highest resolution obtainable from the PR2300, in normal or inverse image. This all may be done in exact copy size, double width or double height text or both, or ZOOM plotting mode. Resolutions in a range from 1 to 9/216 inch are provided by the windows. The option of double scanning produces a dot density that is almost a solid black in plotting a display area in which all the pixels are set. WINKJET 1’s greatest usefulness is as a tool to communicate to your PR2300 what you want done with what you have put into the display file. For this reason, it requires and is easily merged with a routine of your own that puts printed characters and/or plotted graphics to the screen. To use it, GO TO or GO SUB is then made from main program to the pre-defined window routines or to any you customize (in Basic) with your own definitions. This may seem to be a lot of footwork, but if you have ever tried to do graphics another way you know good things don’t come easily. WINKJET 1 for the TS2068 is available for $14.95 + $1.50 S & H from WIDJUP Co., 1120 Merrifield S.E., Grand Rapids, MI 49507. Versions are also available for use with Star and Epson type printers as well as the Seikosha 100, Panasonic JR-PO2U, and the Gorilla Banana. (This provides an easy fix for those short-descender characters IF you can live with the fact that plotting mode MUST be used, which will make an exact or enlarged screen-dump copy of whatever you put in the display). Included is a program called TypaLot which is designed as a simple, no-frill, 64-column word-processer to either LPRINT directly or put text on-screen when merged with WINKJET 1. It supplies two additional type fonts (script and enhanced T/S) or you may define your own if you want to. It also prints sideways on Alphacom/TS2040 printers.
