Star Micronics NB24-10/15 user manual Designing Your Own Characters

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the print head, showing the ends of the wires and their relation- ship to the draft characters. As you can see, the capital letters use the top eighteen wires of the print head, and the descenders (such as the lower case “p” shown) use the bottom eighteen pins. As the print head moves across the page (in either direc- tion - that’s what is meant by b&directional printing) it prints one column of dots at a time. Each time a dot is supposed to

print an electromagnet inside the print head causes the ap- propriate wire to strike the ribbon (making this printer an im- pact printer).

Figure 7-1.As the print head moves across the page, each of the wires prints one row of dots.

DESIGNING YOUR OWN CHARACTERS

Standard characters are permanently stored in the printer’s ROM (Read Only Memory), but characters you design are