The first thing you notice about the new Electron printer interface from First Byte is that it looks attractive.
An eight centimetre square white plastic cartridge, one and a half centimetres thick, it gives off an air of solidity and efficiency. And it lives up to it in practice.
The interface fits snugly on to the Electron's edge connector and stays there. At the back of the cartridge is a 26-way centronics type printer port. The ribbon cable from the printer is attached here.
The Electron is powered on, the printer is brought on line and suddenly your micro can write! It's as easy as that. There's no loading a tape or typing in programs - the interface is ready to go.
The instructions on how to fit the interface and attach the cable are excellent. A model of clarity, they even remind you to take the plastic cover off the edge connector.
They then tell you how to use the interface, again making something that can seem complicated appear simplicity itself.
You can turn the printer on and off using Ctrl+B and Ctrl+C or, from inside a program, using VDU2 and VDU3.
From then on you can have printouts of all your listings. Until you've used it, you won't believe how much simpler it is to debug a program using hard copy.
This alone would make the printer interface a worthwhile investment. But the advent of word processors for the Electron will be the main reason people will be looking for printer interfaces.
You're not just stuck with normal printing either as the interface allows you to send control or "escape" characters to the printer.
These are Ascii codes which tell the printer to do such things as italic, bold and condensed printing.
Which code does which depends on the printer being used. Be warned - printer manuals are usually appallingly difficult to understand.
In fact, the instructions on how to use the interface are some of the best explanations of how to use a printer that I've come across. And the interface lives up to the instructions.
We use all sorts of control codes to get all sorts of printing effects on Electron User. Until now we've had to use a BBC Micro, but with the arrival of this interface I've been able to use them all on the Electron and had no problems.
Simple to fit and even simpler to use, well made and well packaged and with its own self-contained software, the First Byte Electron Printer Interface looks set to emulate the success of the previous joystick interface. A very good product indeed.
1st October 1984
