[Coco] $4 USB HOST a chip

[Gene Heskett]

On Thursday 23 February 2017 07:04:30 Francis Swygert wrote:

> Sounds very interesting Allen! This does open the CoCo up to some USB
> devices, but there would still have to be a driver written to support
> it. Not that big a deal in OS-9 of course, but pretty useless to DECB
> users.
>
> Still waiting for someone to build a printer driver that will simply
> plug into the bit-banger and output to a modern dumb inkjet printer.
> Would have to be something like an Arduino or RPi that takes the
> output from the CoCo and translates it, but should be an easy software
> project. That $4 USB chip might make it easier to get from the CoCo
> into the controller though... Frank Swygert Fix-It-Frank Handyman
> Service
>  803-604-6548

That might be a worthwhile project, Frances. However that is exactly what 
we do when we run drivewire, we are using our drivewire connected PC to 
do that translation. I can list textfile >/p on the coco, it gets sent 
to this machine and handed off to the cups printer defined in the 
drivewire config. If I set that default to the little Brother laser, it 
comes out in the default font for that printer, much easier to read than 
the old 9x7 dot matrix, and once the transfer is complete, 5 seconds or 
so for drum preheat, and then watch it pile up on the output tray at 19 
pages a minute. And that printer is not dedicated just to the coco, 
every computer on my home network can use it thanks to cups. Whats not 
to like about that?  And its a great incentive to learn nitros9 and 
drivewire.

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
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