The Great Little Printer

By Kenneth Bernholm

"The Great Little Printer" is not merely subjective praise for a particular computer printer. It's the actual name of a dot matrix printer from the 1980s manufactured jointly by Centronics and Brother and licensed to several other companies. It exists in two versions.

Version 1

The first version has a single bank of configuration switches and no options for Near Letter Quality (NLQ) printing except the Schneider NLQ401.

Brother M-1009	Marketed for the Fujitsu FM in Japan	Won an iF Design Award in 1985
Brother M-1009X	Marketed for the MSX in Japan
Centronics Great Little Printer
Commodore MPS-803 (beige)	Different body, controls, and ports but same mechanism	Download the Commodore MPS-803 Dot Matrix User's Guide
Commodore MPS-803 (gray)	Identical to the beige edition
Schneider NLQ401	The only version 1 model with NLQ printing	Download the Schneider NLQ401 Benutzer-Handbuch
Yamaha PN-101	Marketed for the MSX

Version 2

The second version has two banks of configuration switches and an extra control panel LED to indicate NLQ mode.

Brother M-1109	Download the Brother M-1109 bedienungshandbuch Read an automatic english translation Watch a video on servicing the Brother M-1109
Centronics Great Little Printer II
Sony PRN-M09

At least one American company licensed The Great Little Printer. It might have been RCA. I've had a scan of the ad but seem to have lost it.

The Brother HR-5 is a thermal printer that looks a lot like the Brother M-1009 but shares no mechanical parts. Jan Derogee has an informative page about the very similar looking Brother HR-5C thermal printer.

Version 2 configuration

The configuration is problably what most people are looking for, so I have manually translated those here.

Bank 1

Switch	Description	ON	OFF	Default
1-1	Interface mode and parity	See table 1		ON
1-2	Interface mode and parity	See table 1		ON
1-3	X-ON/X-OFF (1)	Transmit	Not transmit	ON
1-4	Baud rate	See table 2		OFF
1-5				OFF
1-6				ON
1-7	Character code level	8 bit	7 bit	ON
1-8	Not used			ON
1-9	1″ skip perforation	Yes	No	OFF
1-10	Print mode default	NLQ	Draft	OFF

The mode selected by SW1-3 for the X-ON/OFF line does not affect any of the signal lines except X-ON/X-OFF. The X-ON signal triggers at power-up when the printer is ready to receive data.

Table 1 : Interface mode and parity

Switch	Parallel	Serial (no parity)	Serial (odd parity)	Serial (even parity)
1-1	ON	OFF	ON	OFF
1-2	ON	ON	OFF	OFF

Table 2 : Baud rate

Switch	110	150	300	600	1200 (default)	2400	4800	9600
1-4	OFF	ON	OFF	ON	OFF	ON	OFF	ON
1-5	OFF	OFF	ON	ON	OFF	OFF	ON	ON
1-6	OFF	OFF	OFF	OFF	ON	ON	ON	ON

Bank 2 in mode 1 (Epson FX) (default)

Switch	Description		ON	OFF	Default
2-1	Form length		11″	12″	ON
2-2	Printer mode		1: Epson FX	2: IBM	ON
2-3	National character		See table 3		OFF (1)
2-4					OFF
2-5					OFF
2-6	Slashed/unslashed zero		with slash	without slash	ON
2-7 (2)	Data buffer	Parallel	With data buffer	Without data buffer	ON
2-7 (2)	Data buffer	Serial	X-ON: 153 bytes	X-OFF: 1936 bytes	ON
2-8	Not used				ON
2-9 (3)	CR (AUTO FEED XT)		Print with LF	Print without LF	OFF
2-10 (4)	SLCT IN		Fixed	Not fixed	ON

Table 3 : National character

Switch	USA	England I	Germany	France	England II	Sweden	Italy	Spain
2-3	OFF	ON	OFF	ON	OFF	ON	OFF	ON
2-4	OFF	OFF	ON	ON	OFF	OFF	ON	ON
2-5	OFF	OFF	OFF	OFF	ON	ON	ON	ON

Bank 2 in mode 2 (IBM)

Switch	Description		ON	OFF	Default
2-1	Form length		11″	12″	ON
2-2	Printer mode		1: Epson FX	2: IBM	ON
2-3	Character set		Character set 1	Character set 2
2-4	CAN		Active	Inactive
2-5	LF amount		1/8″	1/6″
2-6	Data buffer full print		with LF	without LF
2-7 (2)	Data buffer	Parallel	With data buffer	Without data buffer	ON
2-7 (2)	Data buffer	Serial	X-ON: 153 bytes	X-OFF: 1936 bytes	ON
2-8	Not used				ON
2-9 (3)	CR (AUTO FEED XT)		Print with LF	Print without LF	OFF
2-10 (4)	SLCT IN		Fixed	Not fixed	ON

For printers in all countries except the U.S., SW2-3 is ON.
When using the serial interface, SW2-7 controls the transmission of the X-ON signal. If SW2-7 is ON, X-ON is transmitted when the data buffer is 153 bytes or less due to the data transfer to the print buffer; if it is OFF, X-ON is transmitted if the data buffer is 1936 bytes or less.
When using the parallel port, AUTO FEED XT high or low functionally corresponds to setting SW2-9 to ON or OPEN respectively. However, if SW2-9 is ON and AUTO FEED XT is high, or SW2-9 is OFF and AUTO FEED XT is low, the printer will print with line feed upon receipt of the CR code.
When SW2-10 is ON, the printer can receive data provided it is online. If it is in the offline state, it goes into the BUSY state. If SW2-10 is OFF and SCLT IN is low, the printer can receive data provided it is online; if it is offline, it initially goes to BUSY.

Configuration for parallel port Epson FX emulation

Bank 2											Bank 1
Switch	2-10	2-9	2-8	2-7	2-6	2-5	2-4	2-3	2-2	2-1	Switch	1-10	1-9	1-8	1-7	1-6	1-5	1-4	1-3	1-2	1-1
Position	↓ON	↑OFF	↓ON	↑OFF	↓ON	↑OFF	↑OFF	↑OFF	↓ON	↓ON	Position	↑OFF	↑OFF	↓ON	↓ON	↓ON	↑OFF	↑OFF	↓ON	↓ON	↓ON