Printers & plotters
Printers and plotters — Timex 2040, Alphacom, thermal and other printing.
42 threads · 350 messages · 2004-06-20 → 2026-04-10
The center of gravity for the group's printer talk has always been the Timex 2040 thermal printer and its Sinclair ancestors. The physics get revisited in every era: the 2040 wants 24V AC at ~1.2A, print darkness scales with line voltage (variac up to 125V for a crisp print), the paper is 4.3 inches wide, and ink is a category error — it's thermal. Modern-era threads tracked down the schematic and ID'd the parts (IC1 is an 8041 marked ALPHA 2020, ULN2004 and UCN4401 ≈ UCN5800 drivers), and members have settled on Seiko DPU-414, Phomemo, and ultrasound rolls as drop-in paper now that the long "compatible-paper drought" is over — superseding the old Yahoo-era trick of hacksaw-cutting fax paper. The older ZX/spark printer keeps coming back too: the Yahoo-era #1002115 thread is still the canonical answer that it won't run on a TS2068 because the 2068 doesn't pass the ZX81's +9V on the bus, but works fine on TS1000/1500/2048 with a beefier power pack.
Getting non-Timex printers onto a 2068 is the second running thread. Larken DOS's LET /P=O (Olivetti) / LET /P=O/G (Gemini/Epson graphics) syntax was rediscovered by Willie Jones; Willie also re-cloned the JLO Centronics printer board and rolled the stack-and-jumper hack into a clean PCB. On the serial side, Mike Druckenmiller got PRINT #4 working over the TS2060 RS-232 with Flash Disassembler's built-in driver, which immediately suggested using a Raspberry Pi as a universal print server (parallel to RWAP's RetroPrinter project). Tim H's Arduino Mega + ZX-edge-connector shield printing to a real ZX Printer (with a 3D-printed replacement drive belt) is the most striking modern-revival hack of the topic.
The software side is mostly community-built: Stewart Newfeld's Banner Designer (Zebra Systems) was reverse-engineered loader-by-loader to figure out why option 2 was broken and why two near-identical copies of the program existed (different printer drivers in the MC). Ryan Gray's annual Calendar Print program built on TechDraw Jr. graphics has become a tradition — the 2026 edition required hacking Anders Tornblad's zx-spectrumizer to add a monochrome/dither mode so colored hardware photos would print well on the 2040. Older threads point at Chris Nystrom's TE2000 (which printed left-half / right-half pages and taped them for full-page newsletters), the Cardex DTP three-pass dot-matrix package, and Tad Painter's ImageScan-style scanner that clipped onto a dot-matrix print head — the same trick as Mac ThunderScan.
Cross-era continuity shows up in the small compatibility quirks: David noted the 2040 isn't fully address-decoded, which explains why it fights the divMMC Future and certain 32K RAM packs, and why it has to sit closest to the 2068 edge connector ahead of any Twister board. The preservation thread (#1000362) where Jack Boatwright offered a full 12-year run of CCATS's The Plotter newsletter (Portland, OR — Rod Gowen's group) is the link back to where this knowledge was originally written down in print.
Key threads
- Sinclair spark printer, Ok with TS1000? (archive.org) — Yahoo-era thread that nailed down the canonical compatibility answer: the ZX/spark printer needs +9V on the edge connector, which TS1000/1500/2048 supply but the TS2068 does not — still the reference used today.
- "The Plotter" Newsletter Available (archive.org) — Yahoo-era preservation moment: Jack Boatwright offered a complete 12-year run of CCATS's printer/Sinclair user-group newsletter (Portland, Rod Gowen's group), a primary written source behind much of what the modern group rediscovers.
- TS2040 Thermal Printer Schematic (#4004 on groups.io) — Definitive repair reference: links the archive.org schematic plus Eduardo Fuentes's IC identifications (IC1 = 8041 marked ALPHA 2020, IC2 ULN2004, IC3–IC6 UCN4401 ≈ UCN5800) so dead 2040s can actually be revived.
- Printing from Arduino to a ZX Printer (#1912 on groups.io) — Modern revival showcase — Tim H's custom ZX edge-connector shield drives a real ZX Printer from an Arduino Mega, with a 3D-printed replacement drive belt that solved the most common failure mode.
- Serial Port Works (#4023 on groups.io) — Mike Druckenmiller proved
PRINT #4/LIST #4over TS2060 RS-232 using the Flash Disassembler driver, opening the now-favored path of using a Raspberry Pi (or RWAP's RetroPrinter) as a universal print bridge. - Timex 2040 Printer Paper? (#6046 on groups.io) — The consolidated modern paper-sourcing answer: Seiko DPU-414 rolls, Phomemo, and ultrasound thermal paper at 4.3"/110mm — the post-drought replacement list everyone references.
- ts2068 — divMMC Future — Twister Board — 2040 Printer (#334 on groups.io) — Captures the deduction that the 2040 isn't fully address-decoded, which is why it clashes with the divMMC and 32K RAM packs and why it must sit at the edge connector before any Twister board.
- Calendar Print (#2570 on groups.io) — Origin of Ryan Gray's annual ZX Printer / 2040 calendar program built on TechDraw Jr. graphics — directly extended in #8907 (2026 calendar) by hacking zx-spectrumizer for monochrome/dither output.
All threads (42)
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