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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

#161

Post by aschmelyun »

Animats wrote: post #128

I had this machine connected to a news feed for years.[1] It's the mechanism from a Model 14 Teletype tape printer. It's still in my living room, and the tape feeds out into a wire basket. It's driven by a Python program running on an old EeePC subnotebook. [1] https://aetherltd.com/refurbishing14.html

That is absolutely fantastic. I've always wanted to get my hands on one to mimic a ticker-tape with updating stock/crypto prices. One day!

Also, EeePC is something I haven't heard about in so long. That took me back!

Re: Getting my daily news from a dot matrix printer

#163

Post by housel »

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…

Depends on when "back in the day" was; even in the mid-to-late 80s, especially if you were on a multi-user system, on BSD 4.2/4.3 local and networked printer access went through the Line Printer Daemon (still available on the BSDs).

For PostScript printers, there was a filter application (provided by Adobe) that would turn plain text (without the %! magic) into PostScript.

Re: Getting my daily news from a dot matrix printer

#164

Post by gzalo »

autoexec wrote: post #92
hansonkd wrote: post #21

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…

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

I wonder if it's feasible to make diy Thermal paper using lemon juice, like the old "invisible ink experiment"

Re: Getting my daily news from a dot matrix printer

#165

Post by femto »

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…

It's not installed by default, but the BSD (lp) interface is still available in Debian with

$ sudo apt-get install cups-bsd

Re: Getting my daily news from a dot matrix printer

#166

Post by amelius »

autoexec wrote: post #92
hansonkd wrote: post #21

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…

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

Re: Getting my daily news from a dot matrix printer

#167

Post by hinkley »

fdfgyu wrote: post #144

I was just looking at buying a dot matrix printer for plotting data. Everything about dot matrix printers suck for data, except the roll of paper that can print arbitrarily long logs. To the community, other than a dot matrix, what other roll paper based printers can I use for this?

I kinda want a ticker tape printer.

Re: Getting my daily news from a dot matrix printer

#168

Post by hinkley »

yalok wrote: post #142

I remember printing the whole K & R "The C programming language" book on my dot-matrix printer, with some roll-paper, and then drilling the pages through to staple it with some thick paper clips wires. Legendary devices.

80 trips through a hole punch will also do it.

Re: Getting my daily news from a dot matrix printer

#169

Post by mawise »

ketanmaheshwari wrote: post #162

Somewhat relevant, I use this little script to open front page of NYTimes daily morning on my macbook: d=$(date +%d) m=$(date +%m) y=$(date +%Y) wget -q https://static01.nyt.com/images/$y/$m/$d/nytfrontpage/scan.p... && open ./scan.pdf

I made an RSS feed of these front-page images a while ago if anyone wants to use them:

https://nytonline.net/rss

Re: Getting my daily news from a dot matrix printer

#170

Post by kragen »

autoexec wrote: post #92
hansonkd wrote: post #21

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…

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

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.
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