Having decided to purchase an Epson MX80 printer of my own after a long and happy experience with the machine at work, it came as something of a shock to learn that it had been withdrawn from sale! In its place are two new models, the RX80 and the FX80. Both greatly update the earlier printers, operating at twice the speed (160 characters per second), with an extra set of italic characters in ROM as well as the standard format. Each has a new elite typestyle in addition to the traditional Epson print, and both styles have a variety of sizes: normal, condensed, expanded and expanded/condensed, applying both to standard print and italic. The symbols may also be emphasised by repeating each dot one place to the right and double printed by repeating one position down, giving a wide range of print sizes and degrees of boldness. Though some combinations are not possible, there are sixteen to choose from, together with another sixteen corresponding styles arising from printing superscripts and subscripts, making 32 for each alphabet, a total of 64 including italic. Both printers can operate in high resolution bit-printing mode with the RX8@ having the same facilities as the MX82 and the FX80 having a few extras. As with the two different versions of the MX8@, the cheaper of the two new models handles only pin-feed paper whilst the other also has friction feed enabling it to take individual sheets.

The additional cost of the FX80 arises partly from the inclusion of optional proportional spacing, but is mainly due to the incorporation of an area of RAM used either as a 2k print buffer or for programming up to 256 user-defined characters. It was this latter facility that caught my eye and, after shopping around to get a more acceptable price, the FX80 arrived looking very much like its predecessor, but promising to be far more versatile.

On setting up the machine I was pleasantly surprised to find that the dip-switches which initialize the printer were conveniently accessed from the top of the machine instead of the old system of turning it upside down and unscrewing the bottom. A new paper-tear bar is now situated one inch above the next print position instead of the old system which wasted half a page of paper every time. But this was countered by a more sophisticated method of paper insertion which seemed hell-bent on chewing every piece of paper inserted. Even after a week's use I have failed to master it.

The user-definable character facility is a joy. I had considered purchasing the NEC PC8023BE-C printer because of its Greek characters but, frankly, the ill-formed Greek alphabet on that printer is a disgrace. A weekend's playing around with the Epson user-definable capability gave me a satisfactory Greek alphabet and a whole array of mathematical symbols. Each character is defined on an array with 9 vertical positions and 11 horizontal ones. In practice only 8 vertical dots can be programmed, omitting the top or bottom line, and if the full character width is utilized there will be no gaps between characters.

When printed in the normal typeface the horizontal points are half-spaced, giving an acceptable quality, but it is not possible to program adjacent horizontal points to improve the definition. Even so, the facility is extremely versatile with programmable specifications for proportional spacing and all the printing options mentioned so far. The user definable RAM has enough space for two full keyboards of characters, making a total of four alternative alphabets available at any stage.

As far as I can see, every attempt has been made to make the control codes upward compatible from the old system so that existing software should run in conjunction with the new printer. The inability of the MX80 to maintain the correct page length in double printing has been rectified, allowing this bolder type-face to be used for word-processing. Of course, the print is still clearly dot-matrix quality and not up to the standard of daisy-wheels.

Even so, in the few days I have used it I have become very impressed with its clean, no-nonsense elite typeface and its classier emphasised normal print. As a curiosity, the condensed superscript can be used with a narrow line-step to produce stupendously small print of amazing clarity.

The control codes sent to the printer to modify the typeface are logical but often cumbersome. To obtain a superscript requires the command ESC S 0 which is sent as VDU1,27,1,83,1,0 and it must later be cancelled by ESC T (VDU1,27,1,82). So simple print modifications often require great strings of numbers to affect them. For word-processing a selection of these can be programmed on to the BBC user-defined keys but the present generation of word-processors for the BBC computer are not versatile enough to match the Epson printer, being unable to cope with proportional spacing or print of varying size.

Clearly a later generation of software and printers will resolve these differences. Until that happens, in this price range the BBC computer and the Epson printer make a formidable combination.