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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : Printing continued...
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Herry Senior Member  Joined: 31/05/2014 Location: AustraliaPosts: 261 |
Still on my quest for some way of printing from the CMM2... I've received confirmation from Brother that my MFC7362 does not support PCL, and that seems to rule out any hardware device. Serial A4 printers are absurdly priced so I rule that out too. I am left with the possibility that I can make my CMM2 transfer print jobs to my main Windows system, which of course has drivers for for the MFC. Clearly I can send data to a serial file on the CMM2. In my comparatively naive mind I see no reason why I cant send the serial file to the main Windows system and then print off it. Maybe even wirelessly. I certainly don't want to go the manual move the card way! What do others think? Edited 2020-09-29 05:55 by Herry Senior?! Whatever it says, I'm a complete and utter beginner... |
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Womble Senior Member Joined: 09/07/2020 Location: United KingdomPosts: 267 |
Page 94 in the manual XMODEM SEND file$ This will transfer a file via serial to a program running on a PC (eg. TerraTerm) From there printing it to your printer should be easy. Edited 2020-09-29 08:51 by Womble |
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disco4now Guru  Joined: 18/12/2014 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1003 |
From many years ago I remember print through on Vt100 terminals. This may be supported on TeraTerm. ESC[4i and ESC[5i are the codes I remember to turn the local printer on/off. So anything displayed on the vt100 screen is also sent to its printer port. Could be worth investigating. Latest F4 Latest H7 FotS |
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| mkopack73 Senior Member Joined: 03/07/2020 Location: United StatesPosts: 261 |
Hmm... I know the old Commodore 8-bit series printers were serial interfaced (IEC connector but it was a serial protocol) and were relatively "smart" devices... Maybe there's some way you can hack their protocol to talk to one of those where you can send it commands and then data across? The ASCII table is different. but that should be relatively easy to map and convert. They're relatively easy to find online and I believe several models can still find ribbons for. They also didn't require drivers to work with... Atari 8-bit printers might also work, I don't know (never messed with those). Edited 2020-09-29 11:17 by mkopack73 |
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| Herry Senior Member Joined: 31/05/2014 Location: AustraliaPosts: 261 |
Also, I have just received a list from Brother of several current printers that DO support PCL. I wonder if PCL is a way to avoid Windows drivers after all. I should perhaps restate that ideally I want to print reports generated by my old BASIC as ported to MMBasic Senior?! Whatever it says, I'm a complete and utter beginner... |
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| mkopack73 Senior Member Joined: 03/07/2020 Location: United StatesPosts: 261 |
Yeah just confirmed that the old Commodore printers were smart - ie, they basically were computers in their own right. They talk IEEE-488 protocol over their IEC connector. The spec for the connector pinout and the protocol should be pretty easy to find online. So might be relatively simple to build an interface and write the code to do a file dump to the printer... Edit: Found this link that seems to go into pretty good detail on the serial interface commodore used. Should provide all the info needed to make this work: https://www.pagetable.com/?p=1018 I should also add that there were a bunch of 3rd party interfaces made for the Commodore 8-bits that would convert the IEC so you could hook up a standard Centronics style printer and make it work. The interface box basically added the "smarts" that was normally inside the commodore printer so the non-CBM printers would work.. So that's another option if you'd like to go this route but not be stuck using an old CBM printer itself. Those interfaces can be found on EBay for relatively cheap prices... Things like the Turbo Gfx Jr. for example. Edited 2020-09-29 11:45 by mkopack73 |
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| Herry Senior Member Joined: 31/05/2014 Location: AustraliaPosts: 261 |
Not able to find any A4 serial printers at reasonable prices. At my old DOS office, with BASIC we were using lasers but can't remember the model. I think it may have been HP2L or HP2J... Edited 2020-09-29 11:37 by Herry Senior?! Whatever it says, I'm a complete and utter beginner... |
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| mkopack73 Senior Member Joined: 03/07/2020 Location: United StatesPosts: 261 |
I should also add that if I knew you were looking for this sort of thing a month or so ago I could have gotten you a TON of different Commodore printers CHEAP (of course, shipping to wherever you are probably would have made it cost prohibitive...) Had access to a small stockpile of them but decided not to take the printers as I had no need for them and the market for old printers isn't take great... |
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TassyJim Guru Joined: 07/08/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 6283 |
The simplest way is to use a printer with parallel interface and make or buy a serial to parallel converter. Easy to do with a micromite. The printer needs to talk PCL or similar. Next level of difficulty is use a network printer that talks PCL or similar. You would need some way of connecting the serial output of the CMM2 to the network. That can be via your PC, a ESP8266 etc, a RPi etc. The device would need software running to do the transfer. Another choice is for your CMM2 to produce text files for output. You then command your program to send the text files on demand to your PC where you open them and print using normal Windows programs of your choice. If you want colour, you could save the text files as RTF so most word processors will see the colour. RTF is nearly as crazy as HTML, (but so is PCL). Jim VK7JH MMedit |
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Grogster Admin Group  Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9610 |
Driving an older LPT port printer is quite easy, as you can more-or-less directly interface to the printer and send it printing instructions using MMBASIC's PORT command. USB printers would probably be completely impossible to interface to, as not only do you need the USB connection, but you also need the driver to talk to it, and printer manufactures don't write CMM2 printer drivers. Perhaps that is something matherp can write.  If you want to study PCL in detail, HP have a 370 page document just on that here. Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
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Quazee137 Guru Joined: 07/08/2016 Location: United StatesPosts: 593 |
How about a MM170 programed as a serial to old LPT port? It should be easier than my old Z80 based one. A life time ago that took serial and buffered it to a serial printer port, a centronics printer port and an IBM selectric typewriter interface too. All wire wrapped. It had a 32K buffer later updated to 64K and 128K buffer. Let the FUN begin.  |
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| Grogster Admin Group Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9610 |
Did that a few years ago.   That PCB was designed specifically to buffer data to either a dot-matrix or laser printer, with a parallel port. I never got around to testing/writing code for it to use with laser printers though. Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
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bigmik Guru Joined: 20/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2950 |
Grogs, I love the top LED.. Mik Mick's uMite Stuff can be found >>> HERE (Kindly hosted by Dontronics) <<< |
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| Grogster Admin Group Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9610 |
Opps....  Sorry Gizmo.  I just posted the image, but did not really bother to check it for that, as I never - usually - silkscreen like that! (I think this is the only one) It is an "Error!" LED, really, but whenever we make a mistake, we generally verbalize our frustration at our own mistake using that word. Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
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| Herry Senior Member Joined: 31/05/2014 Location: AustraliaPosts: 261 |
Shame really... Senior?! Whatever it says, I'm a complete and utter beginner... |
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| Andrew_G Guru Joined: 18/10/2016 Location: AustraliaPosts: 871 |
There has been offline discussion as to what colour it should be - I suggest blue.   Andrew |
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| Herry Senior Member Joined: 31/05/2014 Location: AustraliaPosts: 261 |
That is the way I'm thinking. So you are in effect using your normal (eg Windows) PC as a print server? Or perhaps use a Rasp Pi (Linux)loaded with the printer driver, and simply plug in a USB printer like my existing MFC7362N or the HL1210 that I currently use for A5. Now it is simply(?) interfacing the CMM2 with the Pi, transferring a serial file? Or even sending direct via the rear connector output port. (The traditional saying is 'only limited by your imagination'. Mine is 'Only limited by my ignorance'...) Edited 2020-10-01 06:50 by Herry Senior?! Whatever it says, I'm a complete and utter beginner... |
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| TassyJim Guru Joined: 07/08/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 6283 |
Not quite. The PC option is more like saving all your print jobs on the CMM2 in text files until it's time to print. Then, on the PC, you send a request command to the CMM2 which sends you all the print job files. You then open the text files with any text editor/word processor and print as normal. It does mean double handling. You will need to check if you can drive the printers with a RPi. Because your printers are GUI types, you can't just redirect the printing stream from the CMM2 to the printer. As you are familiar with QuickBasic, you should be able to write a program with QB64 to listen to a serial port and assemble printer pages. That would make your PC into a print server. It would require a serial connection from one of the serial ports on the CMM2 to the PC. I might put something together here but I don't know how much interest there would be in a mono colour text printer driver. I rarely turn my printer on. Jim VK7JH MMedit |
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| Herry Senior Member Joined: 31/05/2014 Location: AustraliaPosts: 261 |
What about using the raspberry pi? That can carry Linux and my USB printer manufacturer probably issues drivers for Linux. Senior?! Whatever it says, I'm a complete and utter beginner... |
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| TassyJim Guru Joined: 07/08/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 6283 |
I have no idea. The RPi is Linux but not x86 so binaries don't transfer. You would still have to come up with a means of taking the data from the CMM2 and preparing it for printing. Jim VK7JH MMedit |
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