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Getting my daily news from a dot matrix printer

aschmelyun.com

221–230 of 259 posts

Re: Getting my daily news from a dot matrix printer

#221
post #208
post #61

OP, are you sure that your printer has a serial port? That would be somewhat unusual I think, back in the day when I used many dot matrix printers, they all had parallel (Centronics) ports. The same model printer in the one eBay listing I found (sold, maybe bought by you?) also has a parallel port, clearly visible in a photo of its backside.

Even though they typically came with Centronics ports, you could often add an additional interface. The Epson-compatible OKI printer I have can use an additional interface board (of which I have one) and have both a serial and parallel interface. And of course there are also those console printers which uses serial like the DEC LA printer mentioned in a sibling comment.

Interesting, nice to know!

Re: Getting my daily news from a dot matrix printer

#222
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you using Brother's Linux printer driver for your device? If not, I'd start there. https://support.brother.com/g/b/midlink_productcategory.aspx...

It never offered the option in my case.

If it’s a Brother, the features are in the suffix of the model name: D for duplexer, C for color, N for network (wired), W for wireless networking.

Re: Getting my daily news from a dot matrix printer

#223

I did something similar with a receipt printer. a thermal usb receipt printer is like $75 dollars and easily controlled by python. Super easy to print out images and QR codes. and the autocut functionality makes it easy to segment messages. Additionally the receipt printer is nice because you can activate the bell inside as an additional "notification" and has an extra control for a cash drawer that I am thinking of…

Last paragraph made me laugh

At least you did something cool with your screen time!

Re: Getting my daily news from a dot matrix printer

#224
post #217
post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming BPA is what you're worried about (it's not "toxic" by the usual definitions but still something you may want to avoid) there isn't another mainstream option.

> it's not "toxic" by the usual definitions iirc if you have wet hands you absorb way more and it is toxic

I can't find any evidence that anyone has ever died from bisphenol-A poisoning. Searching the medical literature finds no case studies of emergency-room visits or dying epoxy painters.

Rat studies like https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&d... and https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236345183_Pathologi... come up with acutely lethal oral doses around 2000–3000 milligrams per kilogram, by which measure it has about the same toxicity as table salt. It also has about the same pharmacokinetic half-life as table salt. The concerns (documented meticulously in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_of_Bisphenol_A) are largely about its possible effects as a xenoestrogen, and in particular its potential to cause obesity. There have also been concerns that chronic exposure might be carcinogenic, but so far those haven't panned out, so it's clear that if BPA exposure has an effect on cancer risk, either positive or negative, it's very small in magnitude.

I don't think there's anything in the obesity concern, because the obesity pandemic seems to be associated with eating ultra-processed food rather than handling thermal-printer receipts or drinking out of Nalgene bottles. My best guess is that we'll find out that a few food additives that became popular 50 years ago upset the intestinal microbiome in a way that promotes obesity.

In the meantime, though, it doesn't seem unreasonable to try to minimize your exposure to the stuff, even if ultimately it turns out to be harmless or only slightly harmful. But I wouldn't worry about it.

Eating synthetic imitations of food, though, seems overwhelmingly likely to be bad for you.

Re: Getting my daily news from a dot matrix printer

#225
post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

whelmed = overwhelmed https://www.ragan.com/comms-etymology-can-you-just-be-whelme...

Perhaps. But: "You're overwhelmed, Freeze was underwhelmed. Why isn't anyone ever just whelmed?" https://youtu.be/UdBcnRFN4Vg Also: https://youtu.be/4u63ciF_r0g

https://youtube.com/shorts/Z9ifuTpljg0

Re: Getting my daily news from a dot matrix printer

#226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I miss the soundscape of old computers: - the POST beep - the sound a floppy drive makes after inserting - the infernal scream of a dot matrix printer - even I don't miss dial-up sounds though.

post beep is a premium feature today! most boards won't have any. if you pay premium, you get post beep. if you pay even more you get post stage led indicators. so this item on your list is not about the past but enshitification.

Can’t you just buy a PC speaker (beeper) and plug it into a 4-pin header on the motherboard anymore? That used to be the case around 10 years ago.

Re: Getting my daily news from a dot matrix printer

#227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Receipt printers are fun but take care not to buy toxic paper https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2014/03/the-health-...

Does this warning also hold for thermal label printers? I have this one: https://www.creativebloq.com/reviews-niimbot-d110

Brother P-touch uses thermal transfer where pigment is bonded to a substrate rather than a chemical phase change and is safe.

Re: Getting my daily news from a dot matrix printer

#230
post #203
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usually, drivers for similar printers might work. There are also generic driver sets like Gutenprint. Nonetheless, note that CUPS now discourages the use of any drivers, and support will be removed in the future. They claim that modern printers implement IPP and that should be the preferred protocol for printing. In IPP, printers advertise capabilities and are able to handle different high-level printing requests.

That is wrong. CUPS recommends using the IPP protocol , but the IPP driver (called “IPP Everywhere”) is only available on relatively modern printers. Everything else still has to use drivers, mostly PPD.

Any CUPS daemon will raise the following warning on startup. I just copied this from my Systemd log:

  cupsd[873]: Printer drivers are deprecated and will stop working in a future version of CUPS. See https://github.com/OpenPrinting/cups/issues/103
Not saying this is the correct decision, but IPP Everywhere is available on most printers that are < 10 years old. Obviously, that rules out older printers, which are fairly common.
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