[Coco] Daisy Wheel printer on Coco

[Gene Heskett]

On Friday 03 July 2020 16:54:43 Chris Oliver via Coco wrote:

> All,
>
> Is there any reason that a DWII or DWP-410 (with a serial-to-parallel
> converter — there is no serial connector on the back of the daisy
> wheel printers) would not fully work with a Coco?  Has anyone ever
> tested one, e.g. with Scripsit or some other word processing program?
>
> Chris

I used a Xerox 1650-ro, the fastest daisy wheel ever, with my coco3 for 
20 years, until I could no longer get usable ribbons for it. You can if 
you dig deep enough in mexican warehouses, still get them, but thewy 
shatter like glass on the first strike, all the plasticizer has been 
baked out of the plastic by the heat of 30 years in the warehouse.

This is an all linux house, so with drivewire I can use any printer that 
cups can use, cups being Common Unix Printing System. So by replaceing 
the /p driver in my nitros9 boot, and completing the circuit with a 
usb-2 extension cable, drivewire buffers the output until the stream 
runs dry, then closes the buffer and hands it off to the configured in 
drivewire printer.  So for the last nearly 10 years, I have been 
printing to a $120 brother B&W laser at 19 pages of text a minute.  But 
since this virus, that printer has died after using up about 25 reams of 
paper and 3 toner carts. Brothers replacement printer now does duplex, 
but I've not been to the store to replace it.

I am not out of the printing business but my coco3 has died, dried out  
caps I suspect, so I'm out of a real urge to replace it, as I also have 
a tabloid capable brother ink-jet thats a lot slower, but it works full 
duplex too, saving paper if not ink.

I'm not that fam with (spit) winders, but I expect a bit of creative 
scripting could do the same thing. I cheated a little, that laser 
actually lived on the coco3's desk for years, plugged into the same usb 
hub the coco3's dw cable was plugged into.  

Cheers, Gene Heskett
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