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Getting my daily news from a dot matrix printer

aschmelyun.com

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Re: Getting my daily news from a dot matrix printer

#101

Post by layer8 »

ale42 wrote: post #6

Matrix printers can actually do quite a lot... depending on the models, you can change fonts, use bold, underline, sometimes italic, double-width and double-height characters and even graphics (although often are relatively low resolutions like 90 or 180 DPI). One funny thing I did once for a escape-room-like game, was a box with only a parallel printer connector on it. When connected to the printer, it was parasite-…

It would be fun to have a terminal that understands ESC/P, supporting different fonts and CPI and the like.

Re: Getting my daily news from a dot matrix printer

#102

Post by rbanffy »

beala wrote: post #96
rbanffy wrote: post #12

I've been thinking about getting myself an electronic typewriter and MITM the keyboard to turn it into a into a serial terminal. I can't afford a proper ASR-33, so I'll have to make it work with what I got.

I did this. Wrote it up here: https://notes.bayesup.date/Projects/The+Self-Typing+Typewrit...

You made my job a whole lot easier. Thank you!

Re: Getting my daily news from a dot matrix printer

#103

Post by hawski »

sangnoir wrote: post #50
hawski wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With macOS there is this one off topic thing regarding printing that always gets me. I once had a company Macbook and it connected to my old Brother printer without problems and only then (after almost ten years of having the printer) I discovered it has double sided printing. It just worked. I always wondered if there is a way to connect somehow to this machinery to get a macOS printer driver or whatever and emulate…

IIRC, Apple employed the maintainer[1] of CUPS - which is/was available on MacOS for network printing, and has been available on Linux for even longer. I would be surprised if the feature was not available on Linux for your printer. Edit: added footnote 1. The chief maintainer - not the only maintainer, between 2007-2019

I know about CUPS. There is no real alternative on Linux, is there? But it doesn't work like on macOS. I am sure they added some of magic on top.

On macOS I think it either recognized my printer or I had to select it from a list. I don't remember which for sure. It was a few years ago.

On Linux my Brother printer is not on the list. Brother offers a deb and rpm packages which may be obsolete for all I know. Then you have to install it manually. But in my case it never offered double sided printing.

For years I am using a crutch in terms of Android driver and Brother's own app. This despite being offered by the producer doesn't offer double sided printing either. It doesn't even give ability to print in grayscale.

Re: Getting my daily news from a dot matrix printer

#104

Post by bee_rider »

hawski wrote: post #47
slsii wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just tested this on OS X, which doesn't expose printers through /dev/ in the way you're describing as far as I can tell. But apparently lp exists on OS X, so you can do echo "Hello printer" | lp -d , and find the name through lpstat -p. And sure enough, this works! Just tested on my new printer.

With macOS there is this one off topic thing regarding printing that always gets me. I once had a company Macbook and it connected to my old Brother printer without problems and only then (after almost ten years of having the printer) I discovered it has double sided printing. It just worked. I always wondered if there is a way to connect somehow to this machinery to get a macOS printer driver or whatever and emulate…

Huh, my first thought was that it ought to be somewhat mechanically obvious if the printer supports double sided printing. But now I’m thinking, some printers do just magically suck the paper back in for the second side, right? And I’m wondering if my printer might secretly support double sided printing as well.

Re: Getting my daily news from a dot matrix printer

#105

Post by sgt »

slsii wrote: post #31
whartung wrote: post #29

So, curiosity today. One of the things that this person does is simply echo to /dev/lp0. Which is all you did back in the day. Shove text down the interface, and the printer printed. Now, while we have very fancy modern printers, they're still printers with a long legacy. Even back in the day, early HP laser printers worked like this. Shove data down the wire, and it printed (Courier 10, 66 lines per page). Only the…

I just tested this on OS X, which doesn't expose printers through /dev/ in the way you're describing as far as I can tell. But apparently lp exists on OS X, so you can do echo "Hello printer" | lp -d , and find the name through lpstat -p. And sure enough, this works! Just tested on my new printer.

Works for me as well. This is a network printer available via WiFi.

Re: Getting my daily news from a dot matrix printer

#106

Post by toast0 »

FredPret wrote: post #22
freetanga wrote: post #11

Cool project. I missed that sound. Hearing it again makes me realize how patient my folks were with my midnight debugging sessions… On the other hand, when the author wanted to push Unicode on this, I felt old and immediately pictured Epsons old wire bound manuals outlining supported characters (a subset of ASCII if I recall)

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.

> even I don't miss dial-up sounds though.

I do. It's like the walk-up song to talking to my friends and having a good time.

Re: Getting my daily news from a dot matrix printer

#108

Post by tonyedgecombe »

ssl-3 wrote: post #75
mmmlinux wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not like a laser printer can really print line by line though.

An old HP laser printer will buffer plain text line-by-line, and will print a page once the last line is buffered. That buffer could have several random programs' outputs in it, all just dumped as simply as possible to /dev/lp0 (or lpt1 or whatever), and it works. A LaserWriter can't do these things.

>will print a page once the last line is buffered.

You could usually set a timeout to eject the page if no data had been received for a while.

>A LaserWriter can't do these things.

The LaserWriter could emulate a Diablo printer which would do the same thing. It wouldn't accept PostScript then though.

Re: Getting my daily news from a dot matrix printer

#109

Post by yellowapple »

whartung wrote: post #29

So, curiosity today. One of the things that this person does is simply echo to /dev/lp0. Which is all you did back in the day. Shove text down the interface, and the printer printed. Now, while we have very fancy modern printers, they're still printers with a long legacy. Even back in the day, early HP laser printers worked like this. Shove data down the wire, and it printed (Courier 10, 66 lines per page). Only the…

> So, if I plug a USB printer into a computer, and ls > /dev/usbXXX, will it print today? Does that still "just work"?

I can't attest to whether piping directly to the device works, but I routinely do stuff like

    lpr -o raw -P $SOME_CUPS_PRINTER
Back when I was doing warehouse IT work I'd hand-write ZPL code and shove it directly into Zebra printers for things like asset tags, printed instructions on equipment, etc. This was also my approach for various tools I wrote to automate the printing of packing slips and shipping labels - except these programs had to run on Windows machines, and I tell ya hwat Windows sure doesn't make it as easy as CUPS does.

More recently I dusted off that particular skillset in order to print a bunch of labels for my kitchen. ZPL really ain't that bad of a language; sure beats trying to write PostScript or PCL by hand :)

Re: Getting my daily news from a dot matrix printer

#110

Post by tonyedgecombe »

joeyparsons wrote: post #18

til you can still easily buy continuously feedable paper for dot matrix printers on amazon - was wondering if that was a scarce resource for a project like this! kudos!

You can still buy new impact printers.

https://printronix.com/line-matrix-printers/

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