Printing from Vintage PCs with modern printer.

[Eudimorphodon]

None of my really retro PC's have networking cards (my poor 5150 has no free slots) besides I almost prefer to keep my vintage PC's Air gaped, that being said maybe I need to look into setting up a separate local network for just my retro stuff. Token ring maybe?

I *really* love having the network card in my Tandy; just the ability to shoot files back and forth across the network with NC was worth the price of admission. If I had even the slightest talent with x86 assembly language programming I'd start to wonder if it would be possible to combine PRN2FILE with the MTCP libraries to make a direct-to-network print TSR redirector for bare DOS.

(I did find the source code to a version of prn2file kicking around out there...)

 

[Stone]

I've heard of stuff like that with null modem serial cables and such connecting to a linux box as a terminal... But i'm not sure how much networking i really need to get into on the 5150

You said:

ANYWAYS the point of what i'm asking: is there any way to print from a vintage computer with an LPT port to a new USB or network printer?

With the 5150 as the workstation you could print to your network printer directly from the 5150.

 

[pinkdonut666]

My 5170 is definitely on my home network. That’s how I get files to a computer with a 360K floppy drive the easiest way.

slight off topic but

I have a Machine in my server cabinet with a 360k drive in it that i use as a network accessible 360k drive for making backups of software / games.

I am however excitedly awaiting a greaseweezle to simplify this.

 

[pinkdonut666]

You said:

With the 5150 as the workstation you could print to your network printer directly from the 5150.

I wouldn't have the slightest clue how to set this up, and what software to use... But that also might be an idea.

if i could have PRN2FILE print to a network drive, that could also be quite useful....

 

[Stone]

There's really nothing to set up.

http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthre...se-amp-setup-Server-Workstation-based-network

All you need is a parallel cable.

 

[gslick]

my guess is these cables may or may not work depending on the printer. I have a feeling not all printers will support this.

Although an LPT host to USB printer cable might not be the ideal solution for your situation, generic USB printer support might not be too much of an issue. At the lowest level there is a common USB printer device class specification that probably almost all USB printers implement.

Most of the manufacturers of microcontrollers which provide embedded USB host controller support probably have USB libraries available which support USB printers.

For example Microchip has an app note on how their microcontrollers with USB OTG peripherals can provide generic support for USB printers:
AN1233 USB Printer Class on an Embedded Host
ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/AppNotes/01233a.pdf

It wouldn't take too much to build such a microcontroller into a device as a bridge between a legacy LPT port on host and a USB printer.

 

[Eudimorphodon]

Although an LPT host to USB printer cable might not be the ideal solution for your situation, generic USB printer support might not be too much of an issue. At the lowest level there is a common USB printer device class specification that probably almost all USB printers implement.

The main issue you're likely to run into with that Centronics-USB host cable is *many* cheap printers these days are what are broadly described as GDI Printers, or what we used to call "WinPrinters". These sorts of printers dispense with any classic printer language support (or even just dumb line-printer emulation) and only support an extremely rudimentary and often undocumented page description language based on transferring pre-rendered bitmaps from the host. One of those printers is going to be pretty useless when connected up to an oldskool computer even if technically that simple non-protocol-translating cable allows you to send data to it.

That is the beauty of using something like a shield on a Raspberry Pi-caliber computer to capture the data, you have enough horsepower to run Epson, PCL, or Postscript emulators that can translate print jobs from old software into something you *can* output on a GDI printer, assuming there's a CUPS driver for it. (Which covers a decent but not completely comprehensive subset of said printers.)

 

[Trixter]

this is my retro computer area such as it is, and my 42U server rack with all the networking crap is at the other end of the basement. There is currently just one 10/100 line coming into this room from the server cabinet.

So use a wireless dongle hanging off of the vintage computer's ethernet port. (Assuming your house has wifi.) I've done that for a decade on my 5160.

 

[pinkdonut666]

Although an LPT host to USB printer cable might not be the ideal solution for your situation, generic USB printer support might not be too much of an issue. At the lowest level there is a common USB printer device class specification that probably almost all USB printers implement.

The ONLY printer in my house is a Samsung C430w color laserjet. It is also in a completely different part of the house to my vintage computer room.

I would really rather not purchase more printers to have around the house for the occasion I might wanna print from a vintage PC. if that were the case i would simply get a vintage dot matrix printer with still available ribbons like mentioned above.

 

[pinkdonut666]

So use a wireless dongle hanging off of the vintage computer's ethernet port. (Assuming your house has wifi.) I've done that for a decade on my 5160.

as stated in a previous post, i have ZERO networking cards in any of my old PCs. (unless you count dial up modems) so a solution like a raspberry pie shield connected to an LPT cable i can connect to any machine i happen to be playing with at that moment seems a good option.

the or the local parallel network as stone is talking about, which I am defiantly looking into.

I was mostly mentioning that for the possibility of setting up a separate "air gapped" network with just my old vintage machines. I would prefer to not have them on the same network as the rest of my house crap, I don't like the idea of 80s and 90s dos machines having open access to the internet, Even with PFsense firewall trying it's best, it's something I'd like to avoid.

 

[tipc]

The Atomic pi has something in the way of a serial port iirc. It can act act as a bridge between an old puter and a newer printer via usb or built on wireless (may not have an antenna though).

Specifically what do you need to print from a vintage pc?

 

[pinkdonut666]

Specifically what do you need to print from a vintage pc?

THAT is an incredibly good question... one I don't actually have an immediate answer for...

I was more or less just interested in setting something up if the need ever arises to print over the default LPT output of my vintage PCs. Many times I have had to take screenshots by pointing my phone camera at the screen to record the contents of a config.sys file in EDIT or something. and it would be nice to be able to just print those out, without having to save the file to a floppy diskette then transfer it up the food chain to a newer machine.

That and being able to print random stuff in wordstar, and other old productivity applications would be nice.

 

[Eudimorphodon]

I was mostly mentioning that for the possibility of setting up a separate "air gapped" network with just my old vintage machines. I would prefer to not have them on the same network as the rest of my house crap, I don't like the idea of 80s and 90s dos machines having open access to the internet, Even with PFsense firewall trying it's best, it's something I'd like to avoid.

The beauty of a truly ancient setup that involves mTCP or Wattcp programs is technically speaking these computers aren't actually really "on" the IP network unless you're specifically running a client program. (There *are* loadable TSR TCP stacks for DOS like Trumpet, but I haven't found a use for one yet.) The machines won't even ping unless they're actively running something so even if they *were* sitting on the open Internet there's not much chance of them getting p0wned. Add that to the face you're running a single-tasking OS that essentially predates the modern Internet and lacks a proper kernel and the realistic attack surface area is remarkably low. (Again, they're not even going to ARP unless you're in the middle of running something, be that an FTP client, NC, whatever, and that program is only going to care about its own business and, maybe, responding to ICMP.) Probably the worst that could happen is the machine getting DoS'ed and crashing in the middle of an aggressive port scan. (Which if you're running on an RFC1918 network behind a firewall isn't going to happen anyway.)

Just for laughs I installed Timeworks "Publish-It!" (A GEM-based Ventura Publisher knockoff I used a *lot* back in the day that runs... kind of acceptably on XT-class machines) and tested capturing Adobe Postscript output via prn2file and throwing it at the networked Laserjet and that totally works too. So whether you actually use a network or not prn2file is starting to look like a pretty robust capture option; if you must "print" something you can try running it locally and just sneakernet the file over to wherever your printer is. There will be a small category of programs that redirectors won't work on because they insist on diddling with the parallel port directly instead of going through the DOS/BIOS devices, but that's probably a pretty small bunch.

 

[tipc]

THAT is an incredibly good question... one I don't actually have an immediate answer for...

I was more or less just interested in setting something up if the need ever arises to print over the default LPT output of my vintage PCs. Many times I have had to take screenshots by pointing my phone camera at the screen to record the contents of a config.sys file in EDIT or something. and it would be nice to be able to just print those out, without having to save the file to a floppy diskette then transfer it up the food chain to a newer machine.

That and being able to print random stuff in wordstar, and other old productivity applications would be nice.

I've personally owned a half dozen printers in my life. Most were given to me. It's nice to have a need for something. I've printed out thousands and thousands of pages at various jobs. At home ... I could probably count on one hand. Maybe I would need 2. If I ever get around to writing my book, I actually like the idea of producing at leasr part of it on a vintage computer. I'm partial to the Atari ST as it's reminiscent of the Fat Mac I owned many years ago (I shouldn't have to explain how), on which I did some creative writing. So therefore it would be advantageous, but not at all necessary, to print some stuff.

If you photograph text from an old computer, perhaps an ocr utility would be useful.

 

[bladamson]

That is actually the killer app that motivated me to wire up the Imagewriter II. Amuses the kids to no end and does a good job terrifying the dog.

I have two Imagewriter IIs. One of my bucket list projects is to hook them both to the //gs at the same time and write a program to make them play "O Fortuna" musically on the print heads.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pG8RAbWs1yo (not my video, just amusing stuff)

 

[Trixter]

as stated in a previous post, i have ZERO networking cards in any of my old PCs. (unless you count dial up modems) so a solution like a raspberry pie shield connected to an LPT cable i can connect to any machine i happen to be playing with at that moment seems a good option.

Xircom PE3-10BT is an LPT dongle that is an ethernet adapter. You could use that and just move it from system to system as necessary. It's what I use for testing new systems, grabbing all of the data off of new acquisitions, etc.