Neil Fawcett examines the new LSP-100 Epson compatible printer

The LSP-100 bi-directional dot matrix printer is Citizen's latest addition to an already impressive range of products. As with most printers, you have the option of friction or tractor feed and this can be selected easily by moving a lever on the top right of the casing.

You also have the option to load paper from underneath the printer using a process called bottom-feeding (as seen in Figure 1). Loading paper this way can only be done when your printer is mounted on a stand.

The tractor feed mechanism must be attached to the printer and you must use continuous stationery. Loading paper is just like setting the tractor feed up, except the paper comes from underneath.

On the front right side of the printer are three buttons controlling the online status, form feed and line feed.

The printer must be brought offline before the feed buttons will work - rather annoying, but this is the case with several printers. Next comes a panel with three small lights - power, paper out and ready.

The DIP switches are easy to access: You simply switch the printer off and remove a cartridge-style interface located on the right of the printer as you look at it. You can then alter the switches to suit your micro. Instructions on how to do so are very well documented in the manual.

The printer is Epson-compatible and it is also switchable to IBM-compatible.

The LSP-100 is an 80 column printer and the print head has nine pins which are used to give you a 9 x 9 matrix.

When used in NLQ mode, a double pass of the head allows the matrix to change to 17 x 17 and this gives you a wide variety of styles and typefaces.

The print speed is 150/175 characters per second (cps) at 10/12 characters per inch (cpi) in draft mode and 40 cps in NLQ mode. Now that is quite a mouthful, but it gives you an idea of the capabilities of this machine.

It is interesting to note that, although this is quite a fast printer, it is also very quiet. Even when doing a screen dump I could still manage to concentrate on other work while it was churning away.

There is a built-in 4k buffer - very useful indeed, as it allows you to continue working on your micro as the printer does its work.

However, there is a snag with the buffer - there isn't a flush button. So, make a mistake you have to wait until that large 4k buffer empties. Alternatively you can the the printer off.

Fitting the cartridge type ribbon poses no problems. It's claimed to last for two million characters - but I didn't have time to test this.

The LSP-100 has a sleek modern look and is surprisingly compact when you consider that it does some tasks that printers twice its price can't.

The manual is well presented and easy to read with plenty of diagrams showing things like fiting the ribbon and so on.

This is a superb printer, well priced and should satisfy the needs of most homes and small businesses.

1. 150/175 cps at 10/12 cpi in draft and 40 cps in NLQ 2. Epson and IBM compatibility 3. Parallel interface standard 4. Tractor feed and friction feed 5. 4k buffer 6. 8bit graphics capabilities 7. Downloadable characters 8. Automatic sheetfeeder available 9. Bottom-feed paper loading option