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Canon printer hacked to run Doom

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Canon printer hacked to run Doom

#21

Post by cdr »

thearn4 wrote: post #16
furyg3 wrote: post #15

Slightly OT, but what is everyone's favorite minimalist printer? Are there any? I avoid printing like the plague, but sometimes you just need to print a ticket, letter, or a photo of a document you have on your computer. I don't need a scanner, wifi, 500MB of software, or even color. I need something which is small and out of the way when I'm not using it (most of the time), cheap, and ready to go when I have to prin…

I have a Brother HL-2270DW for the rare printing that I do need to do at home. Has been great so far.

I have a ~ 10-year-old HL-2040 that's somehow still running. I use it for printing throw-away stuff like notes or recipes. It was maybe $30. It predates even the toner cartridge caps being welded on, so refills are relatively painless and $4.

Re: Canon printer hacked to run Doom

#22

Post by benyami »

thearn4 wrote: post #16
furyg3 wrote: post #15

Slightly OT, but what is everyone's favorite minimalist printer? Are there any? I avoid printing like the plague, but sometimes you just need to print a ticket, letter, or a photo of a document you have on your computer. I don't need a scanner, wifi, 500MB of software, or even color. I need something which is small and out of the way when I'm not using it (most of the time), cheap, and ready to go when I have to prin…

I have a Brother HL-2270DW for the rare printing that I do need to do at home. Has been great so far.

I have this printer hidden in a corner. You would never notice it is there until it receives a job over the wifi. Simple and just works.

Re: Canon printer hacked to run Doom

#23

Post by nwh »

brudgers wrote: post #13
wesley wrote: post #3

I'd like someone to make custom firmware to stop these new canon pixma's from cleaning themselves at every start, and generally taking minutes before even starting to print. It's ludicrous.

My next printer will be a 24 pin, wide carriage dot matrix with a tractor feed. Though it seems counterproductive to use a high duty cycle device for the small amount of printing I do, truth is that the racket of an impact printer is a small tradeoff. It used to be that inkjet would print black with an empty color cartridge. Now, printing something may take hours or days until I get to the store to buy a Yellow...nev…

What's the driver support for dot matrix printers like in linux these days?

Re: Canon printer hacked to run Doom

#24

Post by vanderZwan »

leoedin wrote: post #8

The guy has such a classic engineer mentality - spend a while hacking the printer (the important bit) and then spend the next 3 months trying to get Doom to run (completely unnecessary, but oh such a great challenge!)

> completely unnecessary

I'm not so sure about that - it's sure to help get the point across to the technically less savvy. Also, it got the BBC to devote an article to the subject that it otherwise probably wouldn't have.

Re: Canon printer hacked to run Doom

#25

Post by brudgers »

nwh wrote: post #23
brudgers wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My next printer will be a 24 pin, wide carriage dot matrix with a tractor feed. Though it seems counterproductive to use a high duty cycle device for the small amount of printing I do, truth is that the racket of an impact printer is a small tradeoff. It used to be that inkjet would print black with an empty color cartridge. Now, printing something may take hours or days until I get to the store to buy a Yellow...nev…

What's the driver support for dot matrix printers like in linux these days?

Given the business use case, I doubt it is worse than for consumer oriented models.

e.g. http://www.okidata.com/drivers

Also, keeping in mind that dot matrix printers are old hardware, there has been a long time for someone to write a driver:

e.g. http://www.openprinting.org/printer/Oki/Oki-ML-520

Re: Canon printer hacked to run Doom

#26

Post by Steuard »

ghshephard wrote: post #20
allegory wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bought an HP DeskJet 2540 for £39 for home. Has WiFi, colour, a scanner and just works over the LAN without any effort so is probably the opposite to what you desire. However I've lost count of the number of times the scanner/copier has been useful even though I didn't want that bit to start with and the WiFi actually makes it easier to use. No more finding that USB cable. It's the peak of value to be honest and a wo…

I don't think I've ever used a scanner since the camera became half decent on the iPhone. Even when I have 40 pages of text to scan, it's more straightforward to just snap it from my desk than to walk the 50' or so to the $8000 scanning/printer we have in the office. And, when I'm in the field - well, you get the idea. I guess if I was scanning hundreds of pages, It would probably be worthwhile to use a desktop scann…

Everyone has their own priorities and processes. For me, being able to throw half a dozen pages into a document feeder and get a small, good-quality PDF in my email a minute later is a big step up from the effort I used to put into assembling image files into multi-page online resources for my students.

What do you do to minimize irritants like uneven margins and wonky viewing angles? (Every time I've photographed printed pages, I've wound up feeling stuck with a bunch of work to make the output actually look reasonable.)

Re: Canon printer hacked to run Doom

#27

Post by beamatronic »

thearn4 wrote: post #16
furyg3 wrote: post #15

Slightly OT, but what is everyone's favorite minimalist printer? Are there any? I avoid printing like the plague, but sometimes you just need to print a ticket, letter, or a photo of a document you have on your computer. I don't need a scanner, wifi, 500MB of software, or even color. I need something which is small and out of the way when I'm not using it (most of the time), cheap, and ready to go when I have to prin…

I have a Brother HL-2270DW for the rare printing that I do need to do at home. Has been great so far.

I also have this printer and would highly recommend it. It's cheap and it works great.

Re: Canon printer hacked to run Doom

#30

Post by blumentopf »

furyg3 wrote: post #15

Slightly OT, but what is everyone's favorite minimalist printer? Are there any? I avoid printing like the plague, but sometimes you just need to print a ticket, letter, or a photo of a document you have on your computer. I don't need a scanner, wifi, 500MB of software, or even color. I need something which is small and out of the way when I'm not using it (most of the time), cheap, and ready to go when I have to prin…

Apple LaserWriter 16/600 PS (1994)

Got it on eBay for 1 Euro. Eats standard HP LaserJet cartridges that you can find on eBay for just a few bucks.

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