[Coco] printing

[Gene Heskett]

On Sunday 16 November 2014 16:54:19 Josh Harper via Coco did opine
And Gene did reply:
> I need somethingآ  that doesn'tآ  use os9آ thoآ آ 
> آ       From: Tom Seagrove <tjseagrove at writeme.com>
>  To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts <coco at maltedmedia.com>
>  Sent: Sunday, November 16, 2014 7:49 AM
>  Subject: Re: [Coco] printing
> 
> 
> Has it ever been looked into creating virtual drivers that intercept
> print jobs, route them through Drivewire, for example, and send them
> to a local printer on the PC?
> 
> Tom
> 
> 
> 
> On Nov 16, 2014, at 6:51 AM, Josh Harper via Coco
> <coco at maltedmedia.com> wrote:
> 
> hi guys
> I used to pring a lot ofآ  things way back when with theآ  dmp -105
> printerآ  nowآ  thatآ  ribbons are no longer to beآ  found for it is
> there any other optionآ  to still be ableآ  to printآ  stuff using old
> software
> 
> I knowآ  theres some okidataآ  still being soldآ  آ  butآ  wasmt sureآ 
> it would workآ  dueآ  mostآ  of myآ  software requiredآ  the 105
> thanksآ  guys

Is this more yahoo mail?  It comes in here as a base64 encoded message, 
without a mimetype being set anywhere in the headers.  yahoo mail is 
busted.

Anyway, before drivewire, I did have some scripts that did work on this 
linux machine.  It consisted of a call to set the serial port for 9600n1, 
and listened on it, when a byte was first received from sending a file to 
the bitbanger, it would open a file with precision time date appended to 
the filename, wait for 5 seconds after the last byte came in, close the 
file and send it to "lp -BROTHEHL2140 filename".

That worked well except I had to remember to set the bitbanger to the 
correct speed as the default settings when a 6309 is in the socket gave 
about 11,300 baud, well outside the capture range for the usb-serial 
converters in the path.  And it was noticeably slower because the 
bitbanger was running at 10% of the speed drivewire runs it at.

I just checked the usual suspects for that script but its apparently, if 
it still exists, on the drive I used to run pclos from. But I believe that 
now has a copy of ubuntu 12.04 LTS on it, if so, those scripts are gone.

They weren't that hard to write IIRC.  Bash is a very capable shell, and a 
printout of its manual will have about all the answers you need to write 
your own.                                                                                                                        

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