[Coco] Gorilla Banana printer

[Gene Heskett]

On Wednesday 10 March 2010, Aaron Banerjee wrote:
>I'm trying to restore a Gorilla Banana printer for a coco.  I've got
>the 600 baud chip in it, but can't seem to find ribbons.  It can take
>a Radio Shack Line Printer VII ribbon.  Does anyone on this list have
>a ribbon (even if it is "dead")?  I need something to fit the printer
>(I can re-ink).  Thanks in advance.
>                   - Aaron

I tried to go that route too Aaron, with an old dmp-132.  Sadly its internal 
character generator seems to have developed oldtimers as it was also printing 
gibberish.

So I did the next best thing, I went to staples and bought the cheapest laser 
printer I could find, a Brother, at a hair over $120 tax & all.  Brought it 
home, found the linux driver for it on the Brother site, installed that, and 
wrote a couple scripts that monitors one of the usb ports on this machine, 
capturing the text from the coco's bit banger at 9600 baud, and when it 
stops, sends it back out via the lp command to that printer sitting on the 
top shelf of the coco's hutch in the basement, all actually over usb.  Even 
with the warmup time of the laser, its many times faster than anything else 
I've ever had, and the printout quality is 600 dpi, stunningly great for a 
coco.  Used an fdti serial to usb adapter at the usb hub in the basement and 
a usb extension cable to get there.

Anyone who needs the scripts, std bash style, yelp.  They were posted 
previously also.

-- 
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)

I want to reach your mind -- where is it currently located?