[Coco] What do people want?

[Gene Heskett]

On Friday 12 December 2014 12:10:14 David Ladd did opine
And Gene did reply:
> On Fri, Dec 12, 2014 at 8:37 AM, Allen Huffman <alsplace at pobox.com> 
wrote:
> >> On Dec 12, 2014, at 7:13 AM, Francis Swygert <farna at att.net> wrote:
> >><cut>
> >>
> > How does one print from a CoCo these days? I still have my DMP-13X
> > printer, but I doubt the ribbons are any good after 20 years, and I
> > haven't seen fanfold printer paper in ages. I didn't expect I would
> > ever be able to use it again?
> 
> There are some places that sell refurbished ribbons online.  Possibly
> see if you could get the raw ribbon and refurbish your own?
> 
> > ...which could mean a CoCo SERIAL to USB HOST adapter might be
> > useful, where the adapter does all the translation to output modern
> > USB printer codes. Hmmm, interesting idea. I have all the parts for
> > this, and may take a look at adding it to my joystick interface.
> 
> Well for those people using DW you can print through OS-9.  Problem is
> Aaron had asked, on the site for DriveWire, for help to create/write a
> full emulation for a printer(s) to stick into the DW server.
> So what I am guessing this routine would need to capture all of the
> print information.  Build a version of it in memory as it would show
> up on the real printer being emulated.  Then would need to send that
> in-memory image to the printer services on the host(PC OS) for
> printing.
> 
> Not sure how easy that would be, but I guess could get a ROM dump from
> a most supported printer(s) and use those as a basis to create the
> emulation module(s)?

On linux, its a piece of cake.  Set the DW server to save the default 
text, setup an inotifywait session watching the directory DW saves the 
file in, when DW closes the file, grab it and send it on to the printer of 
choice, using "cups" to do all the heavy lifting, and send it back down 
the same usb cable it came up to a B&W leaser printer sitting on the 
coco's desk.  Beautiful output at 600dpi and 19 pages a minute.

Whats not to like?

There are some bash scripts on my web site that do all that automatically 
for me, all I have to do is "list filename >/p".  /p of course has to be 
the DW version.

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>
US V Castleman, SCOTUS, Mar 2014 is grounds for Impeaching SCOTUS