Dot matrix printer for office use

Foxery

Golden Member
Jan 24, 2008
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My office is looking to replace one of these freakish old things:
OkiData MicroLine 320 Specs

It's a dot matrix, pin-feed behemoth from the 90s that needs to be able to spit out low quality text very quickly, very cheaply, and supports 3-ply carbon copy paper. (Specifically, it's attached to a Bloomberg terminal.) While you can actually still buy these, it feels like a huge ripoff at ~$400. I'd especially love to find one that doesn't assault my ears.

Does anyone here have a similar setup at work, and some suggestions for alternatives?
 

corkyg

Elite Member | Peripherals
Super Moderator
Mar 4, 2000
27,370
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The price is about right. Know that there are not many of these out there, so economy of scale has disappeared.

DMPs

As for the noise - yeah! A suggestion. If you must use a DMP, consider putting it in a foam lined box that opens up. We had one made for our office - really worked!

 

MadAmos

Senior member
Sep 13, 2006
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For what it worth. the Oki 320's are the only DMP that I have tried that lasted even in my dirty shop environment, the other that I have used never seem to last or have jamming problems within a short time. The Oki's will get about 4 years and if you saw how dirty ( dust and oil fumes) they get you would not believe that they worked at all. Found them starting at $315 with free ship here
 

Zepper

Elite Member
May 1, 2001
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Yup, no such thing as a quiet impact printer - the 24-pin jobs just have a different quality of noise as the pins aren't so large, but those won't stand up as well as the 8 or 9 pin jobs to day in, day out multipart forms printing. Geeks.com once had some nice Citizen DMPs, but haven't seen them in a while. We put ours in a silencing enclosure too - not much else really works. I guess Epson and Oki are all still making them. Tally and Genicom may still make the big boys. I see Lexmark, Panasonic and Datasouth dmps on CDW.com as well as that Tally and Genicom have merged and some of those are there too. Hard to believe that CDW has 15 pages of DMPs, but most are checkout type, receipt printers (Citizen makes a lot of those). I see some other brands like Printek and Printronix that I don't recall from the old days. I guess CDW has about everything still made listed there. Provantage.com seems to list a lot of them too (over 200 models, but a lot are receipt printers like CDW).

.bh.