[PD] Controlling a Printer

Georg Bosch kram at stillavailable.com
Thu Sep 1 21:18:55 CEST 2011


Am 01.09.2011 um 00:54 schrieb Martin Peach:
> 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.



I used Max on a old mac with serial ports to drive a imagewriter and a  
NEC 24 pin printer. Though studying the manuals I never managed to  
freely move the head around - it would only do something after  
carriage return. I did intend to write characters, so maybe I didn't  
discover graphics protocol. The NEC had a parallel port and worked  
fine with a parallel to serial adapter I got cheap on ebay.

You might want to look for a pen plotter, too. HPGL is simple to do  
and you can move around with great precision, control speed, and with  
some you even have 2 axis. Plus "PD" is the pen down command ;) Common  
models that don't crowd your space to much are HP 7574a and Roland dxy*

cheers,
g.



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