>
>especially when it is one of those danged cheap printers at the checkout
>that is obviously built to a price, and not a performance spec. These seem
>to print a line of dots without a moving printhead, and have to advance
>the paper to get the next line of dots. Eight paper advances later you
>have one row of characters!

That is exactly how a thermal line printer works.
Ours was built to both.  At 1.2mS per line though, you perceive continuous
motion. Unless the AC line is lower than 110 V, and the printing is heavily
black, in which case I can't suck enough power out of the wall wart that we
had to use.

--
http://www.piclist.com hint: PICList Posts must start with ONE topic:
"[PIC]:" PIC only "[EE]:" engineering "[OT]:" off topic "[AD]:" ad's