[Coco] Coco to parallel printer

[Gene Heskett]

On Friday 13 March 2009, Sean wrote:
>I have one available I would be willing to part with.  And it's CoCo
> specific.
>
>http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/thOZYPoFkZnIf2EYFqgWyA?authkey=Gv1sRgCI
>KYvLL49PucmQE&feat=directlink
>
>Make an offer that's reasonable enough to get off the couch, dig
>through some boxes, and go mail it.  I think I may have the
>instructions somewhere too.
>
>But I think the other issue is finding a printer it would work with.
>Don't most printers rely on the PC and drivers to do most of the work
>now?

Yes, there hasn't been a smart printer made in a decade plus now, and what we 
do have are all equipt with usb interfaces.

I have a kluge rigged up that did work for a while, and then the printer 
driver didn't work anymore.  I was feeding the bitbanger, as /p, to an FDTI 
serial to usb adapter, and then capturing whatever came up the pipe to a file, 
and when there was no more new data for several seconds, printing it using the 
normal facilities of this linux box, sending it back over the same cable to a 
$120 Brother laser printer plugged into another port on the hub so the printer 
was actually on the coco's desk.  That, when it worked, worked very well 
indeed as the laser is the fastest printer here by about 2 magnitudes.  The 
color ink squirters are many times slower.

It's all in a couple of bash scripts.  Ugly, worked a treat.  Anybody wants 
them, yell.

>On Fri, Mar 13, 2009 at 10:52 AM, Michael Furman <n6il at ocs.net> wrote:
>> Bill,
>>
>> To connect a Coco to a printer with a 36-pin Centronics Parallel connector
>> (which is what I assume you meant by a "regular" printer) you need a
>> serial to parallel printer adapter.  These used to be common but are a lot
>> harder to find now that everything uses USB.  Pretty much any will do as
>> long as it supports 600 or 1200 baud and hardware (DTR) flow control.
>>  Here is an example, you should be able to find something cheaper
>> elsewhere:
>>
>> http://www.pccables.com/30200.htm
>>
>>
>> This one supports 1200 baud which will work:
>>
>> http://www.provantage.com/aten-sxp320a~7ATEN02J.htm
>>
>> Refer to pages 38 and 39 of the Coco1 Technical Reference  Manual for the
>> printer settings and connection information (this is more complete than
>> the Coco3 manual pp 313-314)
>> ftp://ftp.maltedmedia.com/coco/MANUALS1/TANDY_HW/COCO/COCO1/CoCo1TM.pdf
>>
>> On Mar 13, 2009, at 5:19 AM, Bill wrote:
>>> Does anyone have an adapter to allow a Coco to print to a "regular"
>>> printer?
>>>
>>> Thanks
>>>
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-- 
Cheers, Gene
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