Re: [PLUG] Parallel port with Debian 12

["N. Albert via plug" <plug@lists.phillylinux.org>]

On 1/15/2025 1:58 PM, Walt Mankowski via plug wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 15, 2025 at 08:27:53AM -0500, N. Albert via plug wrote:
> > On 1/14/2025 7:57 AM, Rich Freeman wrote:
> > > On Mon, Jan 13, 2025 at 8:55 PM N. Albert via plug
> > > <plug@lists.phillylinux.org> wrote:
> > > > On 1/13/2025 8:36 PM, Michael Lazin via plug wrote:
> > > >
> > > > >     I don't think you can write to the parallel port with bash
> > > > > directly.
> > > > Hmm, from some research I did initially, it seemed like it should be
> > > > possible
> > > So, it has been eons since I've used this sort of hardware on linux,
> > > but I suspect it depends on your printer.  Really old printers
> > > probably would just accept ascii text they receive and print it,
> > > unless preceded by escape codes and such.  More modern printers may
> > > not still have this sort of legacy compatibility and may expect
> > > everything to be encoded in some sort of command language.  Granted,
> > > if the printer actually HAS a parallel port it is probably for legacy
> > > purposes, but if it is just really old it might just be from the days
> > > when everything used Windows but USB wasn't ubiquitous.  Bottom line
> > > is that it might depend.  If you've been able to print this way on
> > > this particular printer in the past though I'd say it seems likely to
> > > work.  I'm also not sure if CUPS can create a device node and then
> > > just translate via the printer driver.
> > Yup, that's how I'm printing to it under Windows. I'm not using any drivers
> > either. I did look at the programmer's manual for it at the time (it's a
> > Star Micronics TSP600 Thermal Printer) and that indicated I should be able
> > to write raw text directly to the printer (there are also some special codes
> > that can be used, which I don't need). When I send a job using smbclient, I
> > can use raw text / newlines to format it the way I want (not that there is
> > much formatting control). All my jobs are a single line at a time anyways.
> Out of curiosity, what kind of paper are you printing to? This approach
> wouldn't work well on most modern printers (like my ancient HP
> laserjet) because they print a page at a time.
>
> Are you printing to a roll of paper of the kind that's normally used
> for printing receipts?

Yup, it's a thermal receipt printer, so it's printing to a continuous 
paper roll.
I built my own home alarm system last year, and so in addition to a few 
other things as well as a local and remote log on disk, important events 
are printed out as they happen, for easy offline reference if needed.
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