Introduction

Printing from the Z88 was always challenging. This was because different printer manufactures came up with different codes of selecting the attributes of the characters. The Z88 solved this by having a Printer Editor which acted as a translator interface between Pipedream and the Printer.

As printer prices began to fall, printer manufactures relied on the Desktop's operating system to act as the interface, so rather than sending the individual characters to the printer, it relied on the computer on sending a picture of the page. This allows graphics and any typeface  to be printed. Unfortunately, this left the Z88 out in the cold. No longer being able to print directly, using the Desktop computer as the interface seems to be the answer.

This means that the Printer Cables that were used are no longer needed as the connection required a Desktop to Z88 cable. For further information about that see Connect the Z88 (or BBC Micro) to the Desktop.