Create accountLogin

Recent searches

No recent searches

Search options

Only available when logged in.
nerdculture.de is one of the many independent Mastodon servers you can use to participate in the fediverse.
Be excellent to each other, live humanism, no nazis, no hate speech. Not only for nerds, but the domain is somewhat cool. ;) No bots in general. Languages: DE, EN, FR, NL, ES, IT

Administered by:

Server stats:

1.2K
active users

nerdculture.de: AboutProfiles directoryPrivacy policy

Mastodon: AboutGet the appKeyboard shortcutsView source codev4.3.7

#imagewriterii

0 posts0 participants0 posts today
Continued thread
Public
paulrickards

A while back I wrote some Python to print directly to ImageWriter II & LQ printers, both mono and color over serial. It also seems to work over AppleTalk which is awesome!

I printed this BYTE magazine cover using MacPalette II and my Python script for comparison.

MacPalette II is better at color but mine is better at smaller details, like the text at the top.

#RetroComputing#ImageWriterII
Continued thread
Public *
paulrickards

I got O rings from Home Depot (#70 3/4” OD, 9/16” ID) to go around the pinch rollers to replace the bad foam. It worked well with no friction on take up.

Now that the ribbon is all back inside the cartridge, there’s not enough torque to pull it from the other side of the cartridge. The O rings are loose and slip.

Anyone know a source for better O rings?

Open ImageWriter II color cartridge next to a small pack of O rings.
Close up of the pinch rollers from an ImageWriter II color ribbon cartridge showing rows of new O rings pinching and pulling the ribbon.
#RetroComputing#ImageWriterII
Continued thread
Public
paulrickards

Ok, so this centipede printer workflow isn’t really reliable so I dove into CUPS to try and see if there’s a way to alter the dithering.

I tried adding different settings to the PPD file but nothing produced any changes.

Until I added “DitherPPI” (a GS option) and it produced a result that was pretty good! I tried various values (30, 80, 120, 180) but they all looked identical. In any case, this is good enough for me!

Image showing three different test prints of Margaret Hamilton smiling next to a stack of code. Labeled from top to bottom: "CUPS iwhi with DitherPPI: 30," "CUPS iwhi no changes,” and “MacPalette.” Subjectively, the top and bottom are much better than the middle (default).
#ImageWriterii#RetroComputing#VintageApple
Continued thread
Public
paulrickards

The way it works is this:

1. A print is initiated from a device to the CUPS-PDF driver on my #netatalk Raspberry Pi.
2. The resulting PDF is placed in the AFP share of netatalk/afpd.
3. An emulated PPC Mac 9.2.2 running the #AppleScript below is watching for new files in that folder and will print them using Acrobat Reader to the #ImageWriterII via #LocalTalk using the MacPalette II driver.

It works, but crashes with dialog that I can't auto-dismiss.

Description: An AppleScript that runs continuously watching a folder for any new items. It prints the ones it finds and moves them to the trash. AppleScript: property currentFiles : {} property runinterval @ 5 - - in seconds global folderSpool set folderSpool to "MaclPpi DISK:Print:" as alias repeat tell application "Finder” activate "Finder” type text return open folderSpool set currentFiles to files of folderSpool as list repeat with i from 1 to count of currentFiles set theFile to item i of currentFiles if size of theFile » O then delay 10.0 print theFile type text return delete theFile repeat with j from 1 to 15 type text return delay 2.0 end repeat delay 5 end if end repeat close folderSpool end tell delay runlnterval end repeat
#RetroComputing#VintageApple#VintageMac
ExploreLive feeds
About