This article was posted to the Usenet group alt.hackers in
1995; any technical information is probably outdated.
Re: Printing Hack
Article: 7589 of alt.hackers From: szinger@circuit.mtc.eng.yale.edu (James Szinger) Newsgroups: alt.hackers Subject: Re: Printing Hack Date: 03 Apr 1995 15:31:15 GMT Organization: Yale EE Morse Teaching Center Lines: 43 Approved: Ashtar Message-ID: SZINGER.95Apr3113115@circuit.mtc.eng.yale.edu NNTP-Posting-Host: circuit.mtc.eng.yale.edu In-reply-to: Gopi D Flaherty's message of Sat, 1 Apr 1995 00:30:57 -0500 Status: RO
Hello all, I'm still trying to get mt daisy wheel printer to work with my Mac. Why? Because it's there. Let me offer many thanks to all those who wrote me with help. I managed to find the manual for the printer and a look at the circuit schematic revaled the the printer's serial interface was a receive only RS232 with a 4 pin DIN connector. The tree used pins are receive data, CTS and ground. So went to Radio Shack and tried to but a connector. They don't have that type, so I bought an 8 pin connector instead. Since an 8 pin plug doesn't fit a 4 pin socket -- even if you push REALLY hard -- I took a pair of pliers and liberated the pins form the plug. Using short length of wire I soldered the pins to pins 2, 5 and 7 of a DB25 connector. Then I plugged the DIN pins into the printer and the DB25 onto a standard Mac hardware handshake modem cable and was able to type to my printer using ZTerm. So far so good. But <gf2e+@andrew.cmu.edu> writes: >Now for the challenge: finding a driver that will let you print to that >printer. The mac isn't big on generic printer drivers. All I can >suggest, short of dumping text files through a terminal emulator, is >using the ImageWriter driver in _draft_ mode. In the standard modes, it >prints graphics codes, but in the fastest/worst of the three modes, it's >just text, with maybe a few control codes interspersed. I decided to try out the ImageWriter theory. I hooked up the mac and my old PC using a null modem cable and discovered that the draft IW mode does send the test over the serial port, but at 9600 baud and with a whole slew of additional control and escape sequences. Now, my printer only goes up to 4800 baud, and I don't see any way to change the IW driver's parameters, so I need more help. Does anyone know where I can find a dumb printer driver for a Mac. The driver should let me set the baud rate and stuff and maybe let me specify some of the control code the printer understands. Thanks, Jim -- James Szinger, SECF Support Specialist James.Szinger@Yale.edu, szinger@minerva.cis.yale.edu