[Coco] Coco to parallel printer

Tim Fadden t.fadden at cox.net
Fri Mar 13 18:11:07 EDT 2009



Well, you got me wondering, so I hooked up my coco3 to my Brother 
HL-1850 laser printer, parallel port, and it works like a champ!  text 
any how.
Will have to see if it will emulate an epson printer, then I can do 
graphics to.  I used to have a laser printer that emulated an epson, and 
it worked with os9, cocomax, max10 etc just dandy.

Tim Fadden


Gene Heskett wrote:
> 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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>
>
>   




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