4 Jul
2010
4 Jul
'10
5 p.m.
On 4 July 2010 22:16, Fred Cisin <cisin at xenosoft.com> wrote:
I did that, around that time, too.
I had to get all the files off an ancient dedicated wordprocessor -
possibly a QUME or a Wang box, I forget now. It had a weird floppy
format - I don't remember the details, maybe 8", maybe hard-sectored?
No way to read 'em on a 1980s PC, anyway.
Its printer was a serial daisywheel of no known type or compatibility.
So I wrote a QuickBASIC app for a PC to receive data from the serial
port and dump it in files. I wired up a nullmodem cable, loaded each
file on the WP, then printed it. The PC asked for a filename, captured
it, stripped out all the non-ASCII, single carriage returns and things
like that, then saved it to disk. As it was a daisywheel, there was no
formatting information worth noting; it did a backspace-and-overprint
for bold, a code for underline which I think I threw away, and that
was about it.
But then I found a problem: it did bidirectional printing. In
*software*. For every other line, it printed
[character][backspace][backspace][character][backspace][backspace]...
etc.
So I had to recode my little program to reverse every other line,
which meant it got a fair bit more complex, because it now had to
count lines on the page and only do alternate ones... But not all
pages started printing on the first line, some had blank lines at the
top...
That was an interesting day. Probably 21y ago or so and I've not
thought of it in a decade or more.
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven
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I wonder (and
it's of no use to me at the momnet)... How hard would it be
to make a device with a Centronicts-like _input_ on one side and a USB
port on the other, adn some data buffering memory. The idea is that you
link it between your BBC micro, Amiga, TRS-80, etc (which thinks it's a
printer) and a PC running suitable software. The classic machine 'prints'
to this device. the software on the PC takes the data and stores it in a
file on the PC for later formatting and printing.
Simple.
20 years ago, I set up an IBM AT to emulate a printer. ?I based it on
Bruce Eckel's Microcornucopia parrallel port interfacing articles. ?I used
it for file transfer from machines that had Centronics-like printing
capability, but inadequate communications capability. ?I found out at
Comdex that VERY FEW people had use for it, nor even willingness to
understand what it was.