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Getting my daily news from a dot matrix printer

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Re: Getting my daily news from a dot matrix printer

#201

Post by jorvi »

hawski wrote: post #103
sangnoir wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

On Linux, Brother also has a generic driver (brgen1mlr, or something like that). You’ll need to install both the driver and cupswrapper though.

If you install the specific driver it generally should have parity with their Windows / macOS driver though.

Re: Getting my daily news from a dot matrix printer

#202

Post by userbinator »

jahewson wrote: post #40
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 guess your printer driver is free to emulate an LPT if it wants to.

Thankfully even USB-connected printers emulate an LPT (see the other comment I left in this tree) and are very likely to accept one of the standard command sets as well as just plain ASCII.

It's similar to the terminal emulation situation: despite being decades old, the VT100 has become a de-facto terminal command set due to its popularity.

Re: Getting my daily news from a dot matrix printer

#203

Post by jorvi »

nextos wrote: post #152
hawski wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

Re: Getting my daily news from a dot matrix printer

#204

Post by fefferkorn »

Ahwe used them a lot, when lasers were expensive.They also could be used with special endless carbon paper (Durchschlagpapier) to get immediate copies (even 4), one for you, one for the customer and one for the archive as backup and so on. Cleaning those heads and exchanging the tapes everyday while having a chat with the people in the office, was a fun thing. They were quite robust. Some of them also could print 2d barcodes (for archiving or using with scanners which emulated key presses to feed order id's and stuff fast to the erp)

Re: Getting my daily news from a dot matrix printer

#205

Post by xorcist »

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

dmy=$(date +%d/%m/%Y)

Re: Getting my daily news from a dot matrix printer

#206

Post by left-struck »

PaulHoule wrote: post #68

For a while I’ve been printing “three-sided cards” which have an image on one side and a QR code with documentation on the other side https://mastodon.social/@UP8/111013706271196029 the “third” side is the web site linked by the QR code. I got bored with photography and made up a character who goes around with a cheap lens and always keeps the aperture around f/18 or more, uses heavy processing, color grades and shoo…

I genuinely want to understand your comment but I feel like it, or I, are missing a lot of context. Almost every paragraph seems to be completely unrelated to the last one.

Re: Getting my daily news from a dot matrix printer

#207

Post by al_borland »

sgt wrote: post #105
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.

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

I tried with my HP M15w, also through WiFi. Sure enough, it worked. This may be a little project for tomorrow.

Re: Getting my daily news from a dot matrix printer

#208

Post by Tor3 »

acka wrote: 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.

Re: Getting my daily news from a dot matrix printer

#209

Post by Tor3 »

awad wrote: post #133
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!

I've seen dot matrix still used at car dealerships so doesn't totally surprise me there'd still be plenty of industry uses

I've seen dot matrix printers used in backrooms of airlines (which I have visited for reporting lost luggage, sometimes). This would mostly be smaller airlines (as the now defunct Berlin Air)

Re: Getting my daily news from a dot matrix printer

#210

Post by Tor3 »

codazoda wrote: post #118

I’m fascinated with printing calculators. Does anyone know of a printer that will print on calculator paper roles and print A-Z numbers and some symbols, like demonstrated here? Edit: Looks like I just need a receipt printer, which comes in dot matrix or thermal. Whoa, I need one.

I have a Seiko thermal printer, from years back. With at least one roll of paper. I think they still make them, or something which looks very similar.
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