[Coco] (OT) was Thermal Roll Paper for TP-10

[gene heskett]

On Tuesday, December 21, 2010 07:15:41 am Rogelio Perea did opine:

> On Mon, Dec 20, 2010 at 3:47 PM, gene heskett <gheskett at wdtv.com> wrote:
> 
> On Monday, December 20, 2010 03:43:08 pm Bruce W. Calkins did opine:
> > > The only thing I've come up with would be to cut a  roll of thermal
> > > fax machine paper to fit.  If you are lucky it will be 8-1/2" and
> > > you could get two rolls out of it.  I never did get one, and it is
> > > probably just as well, given the paper supply situation.
> > > 
> > > Bruce W.
> > 
> > Particularly since there is _nothing_ archival quality about that
> > stuff. Cold snap maybe but a heat snap is far worse, time & light
> > exposure also figure into it.  Its a great paper to print receipts on
> > because the receiver
> > of the receipt generally has a blank piece of paper in less than 6
> > months.
> 
> Still have a folder where I stored TP-10 printouts of some of my MC-10
> programs, they have held rather well after 25 years but I doubt they
> will survive another 25, some of them are showing paper discoloration
> and print fade out, still readable though but not pretty.
> 
> The printouts I pasted them onto a standard letter size paper sheet (11"
> x 8.5"); with the width of the TP-10 just perfect to allow two columns
> per sheet - some school assignments were turned in like so with the
> added step of photocopying the paste job to have a less 'intrusive
> looking' document handed out to the teacher.
> 
> Today the TP-10 sits on top of the monitor/TV attached to my 64k CoCo,
> handy for the occasional hardcopy needs, someday I'll have room to set
> either the DMP-106A or the DMP-130 printer that came into my equipment
> spread after the TP-10. The CoCo desk is kind of crowded :-)

So is mine but its clutter, too close to the reloading bench and not enough 
instant storage for the coco's rather extensive documentation. ;-)

I ran an old zerox 1620ro for a printer for many years, on a separate, 
heavily reinforced table because its carriage return is nothing but brutal 
at 18" in 130 milliseconds but ribbons are no longer available.  It was the 
worlds fastest Daisy wheel at 40 cps.  So, needing a printer for program 
listings and such even today, and printers that can print straight ascii 
text haven't been purchasable for yonks, I bought a cheap B&W laser, a 
Brother.  Used enough I am now on the third large toner cartridge.  I use 
it a lot from here too when I don't need color as its much lower per page 
cost is a valuable attribute.

I have a ser-usb adapter tied to the bit-banger with /p set at 9600 baud, 
plugged into a usb hub, which is plugged into a 16 foot usb extension hub, 
and which is plugged into a motherboard usb port here.  The Brother is 
sitting rather precariously on the top shelf of the 'computer desk' the 
coco3&mpi are on in the basement.

Then I & Jon LaBadie co-wrote a couple of short bash scripts that run as 
background daemons on this linux box, which listen to that ser-usb port, 
capturing whatever comes up it to a file, and when no more data has come in 
for about 3 seconds, it then runs that file through lpr from cups, which 
rasterize's the data into something the Brother understands & sends it back 
down the same usb cable to the hub where the Brother's usb cable is also 
plugged in.

Sort of a jury rig for sure, but at 22 pages a minute, is about 21 pages a 
minute faster than the old zerox or any of the old dmp's I ever used on my 
coco, and far far neater printouts.  None of those smeared dmp dots as this 
is a 600 dpi printer.

I have to tuneport /p to get the speed correct in the coco3's startup file 
and if the daemon 'cocod' isn't running here when the coco is rebooted, I 
get an error 246, not ready on the cocos screen, my clue that there is 
something amiss in the setup.

And the skies weren't clear enough here to make the loss of sleep worth the 
effort,  I have seen a few total lunar eclipses before.  One of the 
advantages of having outlived most of ones enemies. ;-)

Today I have to see if I can rescue the filesystem on my coco's hard drive, 
I found an image of a boot floppy in the middle of the directory 
/dd/maxtor/ar.stf last night, I assume some hdbdos 'backup' screwup because 
something contaminated the all ram image of its offset data at $D938-3A.

Thats the first time in 9 years that any filesystem damage has occurred since 
I bought the TC^3 controller.  And cleanup will take a lot of effort with 
ded, and recovery will involve getting the old 120 meg maxtor started at 
least one more time.  I may even have 3 hd's hooked up as I'll need a place 
for scratch files that isn't on the Seagate while I'm repairing things.

Keeps me out of the bars don'tcha know. ;-)

-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
The intelligence of any discussion diminishes with the square of the
number of participants.
		-- Adam Walinsky