[Coco] Coco printers

[Gene Heskett]

On Monday 11 May 2015 22:15:20 abqpenmaster wrote:
> Do any of you still use TRS80 printers with your Coco? If so which
> one?
>
>    I was looking on the vintage computer ribbons website, and they
> list dmp-107 but not the 105, and the dmp-202 but not the 200. Are
> they interchangeable?  Or simply odd sizes that's not made anymore? 
> Asking because I would like to get another printer for my cocos, but
> don't want one I can't get ribbons for. Thanks,   Sean Russell
>
>
> Albuquerque,  NM USA

Are you running drivewire? And linux on the pc? In that event, change the 
printer driver to the drivewire enabled version, and that will send a 
file that you "list"ed to >/p, up to the pc, where drivewire will save 
the file in the directory you configure it to use.  Then on my web page, 
you can dl a couple of utilities written in bash (the Bourne again 
shell)  Those scripts combined with an install of inotifywait-tools, 
watch that directory for the closing event when the file has been 
completed.  They then grab the file, rename and move it to another 
directory (and convert the EOL's to unix linefeeds) where copies of the 
last 25 such files are kept, and then sent to the printer of your 
choice, which you will have to edit the scripts to identify.  To the 
scripts, its just another cups printer.  And cups doesn't care where it 
comes from, its just text to be translated into the language the printer 
speaks.

In my case, its a $110 B&W laser printer from Brother that produces text 
about 100x more readable than the dmp's ever thought of, and does it at 
19 pages a minute.  Cheapest, linux supported by Brother, printer on the 
Office Supply printer shelves.  I can get a 10 page assembly listing off 
the printer, which is sitting on the top shelf of my coco3's desk, in 
less time, including the trip to the basement to get the printout in 
case I am running the coco from a minicom terminal here, than it would 
take a dmp-105 or even a dmp200 to do.  If at the coco's console, the 
printer flicks the lights to warm up the drum about 2 seconds after I 
get my prompt back from sending the listing to the printer.

Steer well clear of the ink squirters in general, their cost per 
delivered page will at the end of the year, be 2x (or more) the cost of 
the paper and toner for the laser printer.  And the nozzles are always 
clogging, meaning a huge amount of ink is wasted in often futile attemps 
the clean the nozzles from the maintenance menu's.

I am not a windows coder, don't allow it on the premises, so whether 
those shell scripts could be adapted to work on a windows machine, I 
don't know, but since its all just shoving electrons around, I am fairly 
sure that a similar function could be made to work on a windows box.  It 
would just take someone familiar with actually making that windows 
machine work for you instead of against you.

My $0.02 (adjust for inflation since 1934)  ;-)

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>