Suddenly I dont feel that alone at still ordering a new ribbon for my MPS-803 last month
I didnt experienced any problems with printing/drive, but then i only tried printing in Geos and only used this with one emulated drive (so not a true comparisation to the initial issue, but maybe related.)
Now i tried printing from basic, and still no issue as long as i manualy start the program.
But then i tried the filebrowser to execute a simple basic program to print 2 lines and this changed some things.
When using plain c64, so TC with one emulated drive, no card , no turbo, only the second line is printed when executed from the TC menu, even when adding a fair ammount of delay in the first line. But not "device not found" error on printer or drive.
When using turbo mode (full speed), both lines are printed. Drive acces to emulated drive still ok.
I tested both about 30 times, with reset, without reset etc. The outcome is exactly the same on every try.
I also noticed that when i use "1-4 to start with cartridge , "reset to basic" or "reset to cartridge" that a reset is send over the serial, (the printer realligns the head as if just turned on).
When using autostart, it seems that there is no reset over the serial port since the printer isnt doing a reset.
Afcource there is a reset after initial power-up of the c64
In all cases i used the serial port on the C64 Reloaded MK2 (latest firmware), firmware version of the TC is Beta-9i. Printer : Commodore MPS-803.
If needed, i can test this next week with some realdrives, still have several Commodore drives "some where in the attic" together with an original commodore 64c.