-=> JASEN BETTS wrote to GREG MAYMAN <=-

 JB> Hi Greg.
 JB> 11-May-03 08:13:00, Greg Mayman wrote to Roy J. Tellason

 GM> I picked up a old Canon 9-pin printer real cheap, even got a
 GM> manual for it from a friend, and it has a DIP switch that makes it
 GM> emulate the Epson control codes, if I'm reading the manual
 GM> correctly.

 JB> It should do, Cannon is a good brand, you shopuld be able to set it up
 JB> tp print via magicfilter/ghostscript fairly easily.

I'm still using a Canon BJ-200 bought in 1994.
Bought 5 cartridges before discovering refills, currently
on the seventh refill on the same cartridge with no
discernable degradation.
OTOH the auto-sheet feed belt broke a year ago and I think
that design might have been better served by nylon gears 
driving an eccentrc cam rather than the failure prone belt.
My Sharp VCR uses no belts, nothing but nylon gears
and it's over three years old and good as new.
I clean it every 40 - 60 hours so my tapes
are in excellent condition including "Out for Justice"
by Steven Seagal which has been played _at least_
200 times as various acquaintances love that tape.
That tape plays like out of the box fresh.
I _used_ to like that movie as well but after seeing it so many times...
If a borrowed or rented tape is played on my machine, an infrequent
occassion, I immediately clean the tape path and heads before
risking my tapes. I don't loan tapes either as I've found it
quite rare for anyone to clean their machine other than with the worse
than useless _cleaning tapes_ that merely build up a ridge
of crud at the tape path edge that causes a tape to lift
up at the edges and tranfering crud to other machines.
The audio on my tapes never seems to get muddy losing
high frequencies as do so many others and this I also attribute
to my care in cleaning which is a ten minute procedure
with this deck.
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