The Commodore VC-1520 is a compact roller plotter with small ballpoint pens in four colors (black, blue, green, red) and a speed of 12 characters per second on average, with a maximum of 80 characters per line. The character count in CBM-ASCII mode is 96 characters and in plotter mode a maximum of 260 steps per second. The plotter prints on roll paper (cash register roll) with 114 mm width (96 mm printable), which is fixed on a spindle outside the plotter. The plotter mechanism comes from the company Alps Electric and was also used in other devices, such as the Sharp MZ-731 or Olivetti M10.
