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Claude writing a macOS driver for my obscure HP printer built only for Windows

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Re: Claude writing a macOS driver for my obscure HP printer built only for Windows

#71
post #66

my Brother dcp-t230 also doesn't have macos drivers and it's a usb only printer. if i ever get some tokens to burn, i would try the same.

I did a similar project for another make of printer, but used DS Flash and GPT-5.6-Sol, so it was effectively free ($2-$3 of Flash and maybe 5% of a monthly Max sub, so $10?)

Re: Claude writing a macOS driver for my obscure HP printer built only for Windows

#72
post #29

I tried to get Copilot to port the Linux drivers for my HP CP1025 to macOS, but it failed. Even modern Linux can’t print to it any more, I had to put an older distribution on a RasPi and now I’m printing at reduced quality. It was crazy how the LLM held on to outdated information. It suggested so many things that might have worked on an older macOS but very obviously wouldn’t nowadays. It also tried to port from Linu…

Doesn't HPLIP handle it?

Re: Claude writing a macOS driver for my obscure HP printer built only for Windows

#73
Unfortunately this is a very misleading article and headline. I don't doubt the end result - it's useful that it works, but it's not "natively" and, unlike what some people assume, Claude didn't write a driver. It basically used HP's existing proprietary driver in a Linux VM on macOS, and just bridged that to macOS.

It also requires a root launcher that runs code from the user ~/.hp1008 dir, so security is weakened.

Re: Claude writing a macOS driver for my obscure HP printer built only for Windows

#75
So the critique from the other story holds true - it really is just running the Linux driver inside docker, and (perhaps) dressing it up as something more - though I note the claim on this page is walked back from the original 'writing the driver'. On the other hand, it really did get him printing from his Mac, so in this new LLM results based world we live in it did its job admirably.

Re: Claude writing a macOS driver for my obscure HP printer built only for Windows

#76
I was able to (through heavy Claude use) successfully reverse engineer a golf cart motor controller that is programmable over USB, but only was supported by a Windows application. Claude walked me through using ILSpy on the .NET assembly, using Wireshark to capture the protocol over USB, and to completely map out all of the functionality in the Windows application. The output was a portable C library and CLI program which, so far, has worked well.

I consider myself kind of an AI detractor but even I'll admit that the tool allowed me to do something it would have taken weeks-to-months to learn to do the hard way.

Re: Claude writing a macOS driver for my obscure HP printer built only for Windows

#77
Somehow, I'm not exactly sure why, I got creeped out by Claude's finishing line:

> Thanks for being such a game debugging partner through all the test pages. Enjoy printing, you and the family.

Maybe it's because my own LLM usage is very "Question > Answer" or "Do this > Agent does that" and I never say "Wow, that's crazy it works, thank you!" at the end or such, so I don't see that sort of things, but if I saw that regularly I'd turn me off so badly from using LLMs. I'm not exactly sure where this feeling is coming from though, it's relatively innocent but just feels so inauthentic, I'm guessing because it's simply a machine.

Re: Claude writing a macOS driver for my obscure HP printer built only for Windows

#78
post #66

my Brother dcp-t230 also doesn't have macos drivers and it's a usb only printer. if i ever get some tokens to burn, i would try the same.

It didn't write a driver. It used a linux driver. You don't need an LLM.

Re: Claude writing a macOS driver for my obscure HP printer built only for Windows

#79

I was able to (through heavy Claude use) successfully reverse engineer a golf cart motor controller that is programmable over USB, but only was supported by a Windows application. Claude walked me through using ILSpy on the .NET assembly, using Wireshark to capture the protocol over USB, and to completely map out all of the functionality in the Windows application. The output was a portable C library and CLI program…

Had a similar thought today - maybe we could finally get Linux drivers for more HW...

Re: Claude writing a macOS driver for my obscure HP printer built only for Windows

#80
post #66

my Brother dcp-t230 also doesn't have macos drivers and it's a usb only printer. if i ever get some tokens to burn, i would try the same.

someone already burned those tokens for you: https://github.com/farafonoff/Brother-DCP-T230-MacOS-driver
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