[PD] Controlling a Printer

[Martin Peach]

On 2011-08-31 17:56, Mathieu Bouchard wrote:
> On Wed, 31 Aug 2011, Martin wrote:
>
>> For me the best are the old dot-matrix with the serial connection.
>
> I've never seen an old dot-matrix with a serial connection.
>
> For use with the Color Computer, I had a DIN4 serial port (RS232)
> connected to a box that would reframe the data in 8-bit packets. The box
> was connected to the printer directly by a Centronics36 cable. That was
> something made by hand, by the owner of a small computer shop in the
> 80's. Otherwise, I was limited to printers that supported DIN4, which
> were a 4-pen plotter and a 75-dpi CMYK inkjet (!!!).
>
> When I connected dot-matrix printers to PC computers, it was using a
> DB25-to-Centronics36 cable, which was the normal way to do so.
>
> I'm sure that there were RS232 dot matrix printers at one point, but
> they were not common.

Yes I started out with a knockoff Apple][ and later I found an Apple 
printer with a serial (RS422) connection. After that I somehow acquired 
a Samsung dot-matrix which had the serial port feature. Then it was a 
question of finding the manuals where the graphics protocol was 
described and ultimately I could use both as plotters. I still have some 
of the printouts but the machines are all long gone.
Nowadays USB printers seem to be in every trash pile, a good source for 
motors, optical sensors and 24V power supplies.

Martin