Sooooooooo, things happened, and I now have a dot matrix printer again. 😍😂
(One of the end goals is to simulate a hardcopy terminal on my old box. I’m waiting for another cable to arrive, I don’t have USB there. And then use ed(1) like it was meant to be used! 😅)
@movq@www.uninformativ.de Heck yeah, have fun! :-) We never had a matrix printer, started off with a cathode ray tube and an inkjet pisser.
I’m happy to see you compose your first twtxt message using ed on your new output device. We definitely need video proof of that! ;-)
@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org When/if I can pull it off, there will be videos! 😅
I never used hardcopy terminals, either. We did have a dotmatrix printer, but that was just used as a regular printer.
Inkjets, I don’t know. They were pretty fascinating and cool when they came out. A lot faster than dotmatrix and obviously quiter. They never gave me much trouble, actually. But I switched to a laser printer long before crap like DRM’ed ink cartridges became a thing.
This is why I love tech from that era.
Write bytes to a parallel port and stuff happens. If it’s just ASCII bytes, then it will print ASCII text. Even the simplest programs can use a printer this way.
With a little bit of ESC/P, you can print images and other fancy stuff. That’s what I did this morning – never worked with ESC/P before, now I can print images. It’s not that hard.
Hayes-compatible modems are similar: Write some AT commands to the serial port and the modem does things. This isn’t even arcane knowledge, it’s explained in the printed manual.
Maybe I’m wearing rose-tinted glasses here, but I think with all this old stuff, you get useful results very quickly and the manuals are usually actually helpful. It’s so much easier to get started and to use this hardware to the full extent. Much less complexity than what we have today, not a ton of libraries and dependencies and SDKs and cloud services and what not.
@movq@www.uninformativ.de Kind of curious now… Is there a (to buy new) dot matrix printer you’d recommend if someone wanted to get into this sort of thing (sending plain ‘ol bytes to a printer port)? 🤔 (I remember this back in the ye ‘old days!)
@prologic@twtxt.net Hmm, good question. I haven’t checked the market, I got mine from someone I know. But to be honest, I’d suspect that buying a used one is actually your best shot, because there is virtually no market for these devices anymore, meaning new ones are very, very expensive. 🫤
FWIW, I have an OKI Microline 3390eco. Good thing is, you can still buy new cartridges for it.
If you want to buy a new device, check if it supports the “ESC/P” standard. That’s very widely supported.
@movq@www.uninformativ.de Are you sure?
because there is virtually no market for these devices anymore, meaning new ones are very, very expensive.
I think dot matrix printers are still pretty common in many Point of Sales (POS) registers right? At least here in AU they’re very common. I had a quick look myself today, there seems to be quite a solid market for these types of printers. In fact even EPSON still sell Dot Matrix printers themselves 🤣
@prologic@twtxt.net Yeah, those POS thingies are similar. There’s “ESC/POS” as a variant of “ESC/P”, if I’m not mistaken.
All I can say is, when I go to big stores like Amazon, then I have trouble finding “traditional” dot matrix printers for use at home. 😅 Epson still sells them, but they’re more expensive than my laser printer was. So yeah, they still exist, just expensive, by the looks of it.
@movq@www.uninformativ.de What do you define as “expensive”? 🤔 (I’ve always thought of modern-day painters as a “rip”, and the ink my god 🤯)
@prologic@twtxt.net Anything above a couple hundred Euros. 😅 The current Epson LX-350 appears to be not that pricey, though. 🤔
I mean, what do you want to do with it? If you want to use this as an actual printer for daily use, I’d get a laser printer instead, because they’re very reliable and the print quality is top notch.
I got my dot matrix printer mostly for experiments and nostalgia, so I wouldn’t want to pay something like 300-400€ for it.
@movq@www.uninformativ.de Yeah I just got a bit curious after watching your video and reading your OP 😅
@movq@www.uninformativ.de Wow, cool! :-)
