The payoff to the ROM-swap post: I stopped explaining and actually printed one.
For forty years the Commodore 1526 and its MPS-802 twin have carried a reputation: they can't print graphics, so don't bother running The Print Shop on one. It's true out of the box—the stock firmware doesn't understand graphics. But a community-preserved 1980s upgrade called Grafik ROM II fixes exactly that, and I sell the chip. So the honest thing to do was sit down at the bench, load The Print Shop on a real Commodore 64, and see whether a banner actually comes out. It did—a full "CHICAGOLAND RETRO TECH" banner, in graphics, on the printer that isn't supposed to do them. Here's the session.
I covered the why in detail in the ROM-swap post, so the short version here: Grafik ROM II—dumped and documented by Lemon64 user marcelv from a 1980s German upgrade—adds 19 MPS-801 emulation commands (plus 3 ESC/P) to the 1526/MPS-802. Burn it onto an M2764A EPROM, socket it at U8, set the jumpers, and the printer gains the command set it always lacked. This post is the part I wanted to see for myself.
The setup
Everything here is real hardware on the bench: a breadbin Commodore 64, the 1526 hanging off it on the stock 6-pin IEC serial bus, and The Print Shop (Brøderbund, the original 1985 release) loaded from a KungFu Flash cartridge rather than a floppy. The printer has Grafik ROM II installed at U8, jumpers set for the EPROM (J3 and J4 closed, J1 and J2 open). For consumables, a plain unmarked ribbon and modern continuous-feed tractor paper (Sparco, 9.5 inches wide).
The bench: a breadbin Commodore 64, the 1526 on the IEC bus, and The Print Shop up on the monitor.
The part that surprised me: there's no printer to pick
On the Apple II and PC, The Print Shop makes you choose a printer driver. On the Commodore 64, driving a Commodore printer, there's no such step—and that turns out to be the whole story. The Print Shop speaks the Commodore graphics language natively: the same MPS-801/1525-style commands that Commodore's own graphics printers understood. The 1526/MPS-802 was the one Commodore printer whose stock firmware couldn't understand those commands—which is exactly why it "can't do graphics."
The Print Shop's main menu on the 1084 — on the Commodore version there's no printer-driver step at all.
Grafik ROM II's 19 MPS-801 emulation commands are the part that matters: they give the 1526 the command set Print Shop was already speaking. So there was nothing to configure. I picked Banner, typed the message, hit print—and the printer just answered. It was never a question of telling Print Shop about an exotic printer; it was a question of the printer finally being able to listen.
Warm-up: a thank-you card
Before committing to a long banner, I ran a greeting card. It came off the platen clean—a full Greek-key border, a honeycomb background fill, and "THANK YOU" in large block letters, all rendered as graphics. That settled it: the upgraded 1526 wasn't doing a partial, garbled job. It was printing the whole image.
The warm-up: a thank-you card off the upgraded 1526 — Greek-key border, honeycomb fill, and block letters, all as graphics.
The banner
Then the main event. The Print Shop builds a banner as one long sideways line on continuous paper, and "Chicagoland Retro Tech" is a long line—the print head crawled across letter by letter for a good while, pins hammering ribbon onto paper the loud, mechanical, 1985 way. Up close you can watch the dots build each hollow outline character one column at a time. No dropped rows, no garbage—just the banner, slowly becoming itself.
Up close, the head builds each hollow outline letter one column of dots at a time.
It tore off into a banner long enough that finding wall space was its own task. It's hanging now across the workshop's Chicago-skyline mural: the workshop's name, printed on the printer the community wrote off, over the skyline it's named for.
Time-lapse: the 1526 hammering out the full banner, letter by letter.
What this actually proves
The "1526 can't do graphics" rule was always a firmware limitation, never a hardware one. The print head has nine needles (the hardware drives eight of them, eight vertical dots per column)—a mechanism perfectly capable of bitmap output. It just never had firmware that understood the request. Drop in the command set its siblings shipped with, and the same Print Shop banner that ran on a 1525 in 1985 runs here. The receipt is the banner.
The sibling that does it out of the box
To make the point concrete, I set the upgraded 1526 next to the printer it was always trying to be: a Commodore MPS-803, the graphics-capable sibling in the same family. The MPS-803 understands the Commodore graphics commands The Print Shop sends natively—no ROM swap, no jumpers. I plugged it in with whatever ribbon happened to be in it (this was its first power-on since it came into the shop, so the ribbon's age is anyone's guess), loaded the same thank-you card, and it printed on the first try. The 803's card is the lighter of the two here—that's the tired ribbon, not the printer; every graphic element is present. That's exactly what Grafik ROM II does for a 1526 or MPS-802: it gives them the command set the MPS-803 shipped with. Same family, same commands, same output—the 1526 just needed the firmware to catch up to its siblings.
The same thank-you card on the graphics-capable sibling—a Commodore MPS-803, which prints Print Shop graphics with no ROM swap. The 803's card (lighter) is just running a tired old ribbon; every graphic element is there.
If you've got a Commodore 64 Ultimate
The new Commodore 64 Ultimate ships with a built-in virtual printer that emulates a Commodore MPS-1230 and saves Print Shop output as PNG files to a USB drive—the convenient, paperless path, and a fine one if a screen is all you want.
But the Ultimate also has the same 6-pin IEC port a real C64 does, so a Grafik ROM II–equipped 1526 or MPS-802 hangs off it the same way it did in 1985. If you want the real thing—pins hammering ribbon, the feed-roller chatter, a physical banner you can tape across a doorway—the upgraded printer is the most complete version of that experience. The PNG is the photo of the meal; this is the meal.
Honest caveat, same as the ROM-swap post: I ran this on a real breadbin C64, not on the C64 Ultimate. The IEC protocol hasn't changed since 1983, so it should behave the same—but I haven't personally bench-tested the Ultimate driving a 1526 over IEC. If you have, send me the result.
Where to get the chip
The pre-programmed, printer-tested chip is at the workshop: Commodore 1526 / MPS-802 Graphics EPROM Upgrade. One M2764A burned with marcelv's dump of Grafik ROM II, run through the full audit-trail and an actual printer self-test before it ships—each chip arrives with a section of its own self-test printout, matched to its tracking number.
Rather burn your own? marcelv's original Lemon64 thread has the ROM file and the install procedure. The chip from the workshop is for people who'd rather skip the burn-and-bench step and install something already proven on real hardware.
Questions I get about Print Shop on the 1526
Do I need to pick a printer driver in The Print Shop for this? No—not on the Commodore 64. Driving a Commodore printer, The Print Shop has no driver-selection step; it emits Commodore (MPS-801/1525) graphics commands directly. Once Grafik ROM II gives the 1526/MPS-802 that command set, you just print.
Will a stock 1526 or MPS-802 print a Print Shop banner? No. The stock firmware doesn't understand the graphics commands Print Shop sends, so you get nothing usable. That's the limitation Grafik ROM II removes.
Is this a hardware modification? No. The print head was always capable of graphics. It's a firmware swap—a new ROM at U8 with the missing command set, plus four jumpers set for the EPROM.
Does it work with the new Commodore 64 Ultimate? In principle yes, over the same IEC bus—though I haven't bench-tested that specific combination yet. The Ultimate also has its own virtual printer that saves output to PNG if you don't want paper at all.
Further reading
- Why a Commodore 1526 can't print graphics—and the ROM swap that fixes it—the companion explainer, with the full install and command-set detail
- marcelv's Grafik ROM II dump and install thread—Lemon64
- MPS-802—C64-Wiki (the 1526's twin; specs and the Grafik ROM II command list)
- The Print Shop—C64-Wiki
- Rob O'Hara—"The Great Commodore MPS Printer Curse!"
- The Print Shop on a Commodore 1526: four routes, one easy fix—which path is right for you, compared honestly
I'm Jeffrey Mays. Bench Notes is where I write up the actual workshop work—burns, builds, repairs, and the occasional 1985 banner printed on a printer that was never supposed to do it. If you've got a 1526 or MPS-802 gathering dust because it "can't do graphics," now you know it can.
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