Integral Data Systems - Prism 132

The Integral Data Systems - Prism 132 is one of the early colour dot-matrix printers launched in February 1982.

A review in Compute! magazine said ...

A new color printer user-priced at $1,995 has been introduced by Integral Data Systems of Milford, New Hampshire. The Prism Printer™ is a low cost commercial color printer designed to compete with units costing three times as much.

The new 132-column dot matrix printer will produce eight colors using a four band ribbon which carries the process colors of cyan, magenta and yellow, as well as black.

"It’s going to help define the expanding color graphics market," says Peter R. Eisenhauer, Integral Data Systems Vice President of Marketing. "There’s a demand for color, primarily among business and professional users." Other immediate applications for the printer include the visual translation of scientific and medical data.

The Prism Printer offers semi-automatic cut sheet feed, also a high-speed data mode. In the normal (correspondence) mode, the unit prints overlapping high density (24x9.) matrix characters at up to 150 characters per second, bidirectionally. The high-speed data mode enables the user to select a standard density matrix and output large volumes of data at print speeds in excess of 200 cps.

Standard features include proportional spacing, enhanced (bold) text printing and standard print densities of 10, 12 or 16.7 characters per inch. The Prism Printer prints a full 132 characters per line at 10 pitch (characters per inch) with other pitches giving line lengths up to 220 columns on standard 15-inch-wide EDP paper.

Selectable features include automatic text justification, programmable horizontal and vertical tabbing, reverse paper feed, and "find positioning" of characters of 1/120th of an inch. While the Prism Printer employs the standard ASCII upper- and lower-case 96-characters set, up to four different 96-character sets can reside within the printer at the same time, for foreign language or custom character printing.

The Prism Printer is micro-processor controlled, with true "logic seeking" look-ahead capability and a high-speed slew for maximum output. It has a standard RS-232C serial interface as well as a Centronics-compatible parallel interface. Serial transmission rates from 300 to 9,600 baud are switch selectable.