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 by several other companies. It exists in two versions described here.
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 |
The second version has two banks of configuration switches and a fourth control panel LED to indicate NLQ mode.
Brother M-1109 | Download the Brother M-1109 bedienungshandbuch Read an automatic english translation |
|
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 printer is a thermal printer that looks a lot like the Brother M-1009 but shares no mechanical parts.
The settings are problably what most people are looking for, so I have manually translated those here.
Switch | Description | ON | OFF | Default |
1-1 | Interface mode and parity | See table 1 | ON | |
1-2 | ||||
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 |
Switch | Parallel | Serial (no parity) | Serial (odd parity) | Serial (even parity) |
1-1 | ON | OFF | ON | OFF |
1-2 | ON | ON | OFF | OFF |
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 |
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 |
Serial | X-ON: 153 bytes | X-OFF: 1936 bytes | |||
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 |
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 |
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 |
Serial | X-ON: 153 bytes | X-OFF: 1936 bytes | |||
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 |
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 | ↓ON | ↓ON | ↑OFF | ↑OFF | ↑OFF | ↓ON | ↓ON | Position | ↑OFF | ↑OFF | ↓ON | ↓ON | ↓ON | ↑OFF | ↑OFF | ↓ON | ↓ON | ↓ON |
YouTube has a very detailed video on servicing the Brother M-1109.
Jan Derogee has an informative page about the very similar looking Brother HR-5C thermal printer.