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Canon printer hacked to run Doom

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Canon printer hacked to run Doom

#31

Post by coldpie »

Tomte wrote: post #12
coldpie wrote: post #2

The linked-through blog article describing the decryption process was interesting: http://www.contextis.co.uk/resources/blog/hacking-canon-pixm... What I especially liked is that this was literally one of the challenges from the Matasano crypto challenges: http://cryptopals.com/sets/1/challenges/6/ It's fun when theory meets practice.

Do the solution links work for you? I've never seen a link that doesn't return "Not Found".

No. Like the homepage says, the site is incomplete. But really you shouldn't be looking at the solutions, anyway.

Re: Canon printer hacked to run Doom

#32

Post by smacktoward »

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 use Samsung's ML-2851MD, an inexpensive black and white laser: http://www.samsung.com/us/support/owners/product/ML-2851ND

Pros: fast, reliable, inexpensive to operate (I've had it for 4 years and have yet to need to buy a new toner cartridge), speaks PCL & PostScript out of the box so it works fine on Linux without any vendor-specific software, includes an Ethernet port so I can plug it into my home network, supports duplex printing (printing on front and back of a sheet of paper).

Cons: can't print in color. Really, that's about it.

I don't think this particular model is still for sale, but this $199 model from their current lineup looks like the modern equivalent: http://www.samsung.com/us/computer/printers/SL-M3320ND/XAA

Re: Canon printer hacked to run Doom

#33

Post by aaronbrethorst »

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…

I bought a scanner earlier this year, but I use it exclusively for scanning film negatives. (and positives on occasion; slide film is gorgeous!)

I also bought a dedicated semi-pro photo printer last year. A full load of ink costs me $120 for 8 itty bitty tanks.

Re: Canon printer hacked to run Doom

#34

Post by Gracana »

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…

This probably isn't quite in the spirit of what you're asking, but I like old laser printers. You can get an HP LaserJet 4m for less than $75 just about anywhere, the toner cartridges are less than $50 and will probably outlast any basic needs you have, and if it has any problems it's easy enough to clean and replacement rubber rollers can be purchased cheaply. The service manual is even freely available and it describes the device's theory of operation. Cool!

Re: Canon printer hacked to run Doom

#35

Post by ChuckMcM »

userbinator wrote: post #6
dubcanada wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't even know what they clean? What would a printer need to clean and how would a printer clean itself without actually printing anything.

Inkjet printers squirt ink through tiny nozzles. When they're left idle in a dry environment for a long time, the ink tends to dry up and clog them, and you get white streaks. The "cleaning" basically involves moving the printhead over a receptacle with a sponge in it (it's called a spittoon, seriously) and firing all the nozzles for a short time while suction from a platen-driven vacuum pump sucks on them (that's wh…

This is exactly right. Of course to understand it you have to have experienced an 'early' inkjet printer which would, if left alone for a week "break" by not printing one or more colors. That led to printers with a wiper sponge and a bit of ink solvent. Better but not really all that reliable, and that led to the current squirt+clean+vacuum sort of systems which had been standard in large format printer/plotters for a while.

And yes, given the price per oz of ink the process is quite expensive (I've heard that it is as high as 0.25/cleaning). And in the least expensive Canon printers the "waste ink" sponge is irreplacable leading to a planned obsolescence of the printer itself. Most of the 'key' ink jet patents have expired so it may be possible for someone to build a printer that is more economical but so far no one has. I suspect if they externalized the true cost of the printer and avoided the ink subsidy that they would not sell enough printers to stay in business.

I chuckled at the idea of using an old 24 pin dot matrix (or why not go seriously old school and use a line printer) printer, it is informative to note that people used inkjet printers that broke down a lot rather than use the older dot matrix printers. Granted the Canon system sucks, the Epson system is a bit better but not by much, HP, well HP can't really afford to lose any margins in their printer business.

So perhaps there is an opportunity here for a new printer from a new company.

Re: Canon printer hacked to run Doom

#36

Post by Nexxxeh »

vanderZwan wrote: post #24
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.

It didn't need to play Doom. It could have played Pong, it could have played Space Invaders, Pacman, Mario, Tetris. It could have played some variation of Flappy Bird.

There are lots of video games that are now more widely known than Doom. People who have never played an FPS have had Flappy Bird on their phone.

Doom was unnecessarily ambitious. Awesome, but unnecessary.

Re: Canon printer hacked to run Doom

#37

Post by crazygringo »

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.

Yup. There's a reason it's been Amazon's best-selling laser printer for... at least a year, I think.

Re: Canon printer hacked to run Doom

#38

Post by mmanfrin »

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…

It's been mentioned, but the Brother HL-2270DW. Only printer I've ever felt the need to evangelize. Auto duplex, very fast, wifi, unobtrusive. It just works.

Re: Canon printer hacked to run Doom

#39

Post by simi_ »

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…

Whenever I have a question like this I turn to The Wirecutter, they usually deliver.

http://thewirecutter.com/leaderboard/printers-2/

Re: Canon printer hacked to run Doom

#40

Post by bzbarsky »

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…

Have you looked into laser printers? I've found that for sporadic printing they're much better than inkjets, and not too expensive as long as you don't want color.
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