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Canon printer hacked to run Doom

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Canon printer hacked to run Doom

#51

Post by femto »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #35
userbinator wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Memjet[1] would claim to be that company, but they seem to be taking an awfully long time to fulfill their promise of taking over the printing world.

[1] http://www.memjet.com/

Re: Canon printer hacked to run Doom

#52

Post by brudgers »

anigbrowl wrote: post #47
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…

I second the advice to just buy a simple business laser printer. I too have had it with inkjets and the refill scam, but a typical laser cartridge is good for thousands of pages. Although I have a technician's nostalgia for dot matrix printers, I can't think of any valid reason to run one for normal home printing needs.

I'm not nostalgic. Back in 2002, I bought a cheap little Brother laser fax. Refills ran $30 for a few thousand pages; I could make copies; and life was grand. In 2007, the output degraded to crap when the drum died. The cost of a replacement drum was more than I paid originally, so it went to the dumpster. I've pitched a lot of printers over the years. Other than the three I have currently, the only two I gave away in working condition were the Star I bought in 1988 and an Hp 550c [a printer that made pleasant noises unlike the 600 series that succeeded it].

Anyway, I'm tired of pitching printers. Wide carriage allows printing US B size drawings. Tractor feed means not running out of paper in the middle of a job. And impact technology means not thinking about running out of Magenta every time I print something.

I don't want to wait for nozzles to.clean or fusers to heat up. I just want the damn thing printed quick enough that I don't have time to browse HN. It's about flow.

Re: Canon printer hacked to run Doom

#53

Post by brudgers »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #35
userbinator wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I gave away my impact printer because I had purchased an HP DeskJet 550c. It made sense as a replacement because it produced "letter quality" output and it made a really pleasant sound while printing. The landscape has changed a lot since the early 1990's.

How much "letter quality" printing do I need in an age of emailed PDF's?

Is futzing with consumables at the expense of flow better than noise? For me, I don't think so. I'm looking anew at printing like I came to recently look anew at the command line. There are tradeoffs, and for me one of those with home lasers and inkjets is loss of flow.

If I wanted old-school misery, we'd be talking pen plotters.

Re: Canon printer hacked to run Doom

#55

Post by Gracana »

voltagex_ wrote: post #50
Gracana wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 descr…

The only thing is that the 4M and 5M probably use a large amount of power compared to their modern counterparts - anyone got any measurements? You should be able to throw most dialects of PCL and PostScript at those printers and they'll work fine, so this fits the GP's requirements (not having 500mb of software ) Anyone know how to make Windows speak PostScript?

Yep, printer drivers are already available in Windows, which is nice. According to the manual, the 4m uses 195W when printing, and 55W in standby. The 5m is 300/80, and 22W in "power save" mode. I'm guessing that's a mode where the fuser is fully cooled off, so it's probably slow to spool up if you enable that.

Re: Canon printer hacked to run Doom

#56

Post by phyllostachys »

bzbarsky wrote: post #40
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…

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.

This is what I did. I bought a Brother monochrome laser printer (HD-53??) back in 2012 for use printing out college junk. If memory serves, I was on the starter cartridge for a year or so, In fact, I may still be on the starter cartridge. I can't even remember if I bought a new cartridge.

The total cost has only been about $150 or $200.

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