IIc to Stylewriter II

[senrew]

Wasn't able to find anything via search.

I've got my IIc working nicely, but was wondering if I could print from it to the Stylewriter II I use with my SE. I've got the correct serial cables for the IIc, but not sure how to print to the Stylewriter. I guess I'm asking what software would have supported it as a printer option. I tried going through the printer options in Appleworks 3 and 4, but the stylewriter wasn't listed. Version 5 would just boot with corruption on my IIc.

 

[Arbee]

As far as I know driving the StyleWriter from the 8-bit machines is purely a DIY thing, there was no commercial software support. The IIgs has GS/OS drivers for it for desktop apps like AppleWorks GS, but that's about it.

 

[bibilit]

Probably only possible using an ImageWriter (I or II) and maybe the silentype.

 

[NJRoadfan]

The only driver is in GS/OS and it is only for the original StyleWriter, not the StyleWriter II. The 8-bit machines have no support for it at all. The StyleWriter series are "dumb" printers, generating bitmap images using the host's QuickDraw routines and sending them to the printer. This will never work for AppleWorks since it sends raw text to a printer. The plus side is if you have another printer with built-in fonts, it will work. AppleWorks allows you to customize the printer escape codes needed for things like bold, underlined, and italic text.

The only printer supported by 100% of Apple II software (in terms of graphics and color) is the ImageWriter line, followed by Epson ESC/P speaking printers (usually the 9-pin FX series variety). Some software supports 24-pin Epson LQ compatibles too.

Fun Fact: The codename for the original StyleWriter printer is "Tabasco".

 

[Snial]

<snip> The StyleWriter series are "dumb" printers, generating bitmap images using the host's QuickDraw routines and sending them to the printer.

So, is the protocol documented somewhere?

 

[NJRoadfan]

If you can read 65816 ASM, the GS/OS driver source for the original StyleWriter is "out there".

 

[NJRoadfan]

Someone wrote a driver for *NIX systems: https://web.archive.org/web/20050216010453/http://homepage.mac.com/monroe/styl/

The protocol is documented in the source download.

 

[Snial]

Looked at it now. Interesting! 57.6kBaud (or ext clk), no conventional handshaking, no CRC or checksums, delta RLE bitmap rectangle encoding (I guess up to the size of its buffer, so if you want to print something with a fairly narrow margin then it can be fairly tall, but if you wanted to print to a full margin's width it'd have to be quite short).

 

[senrew]

Thanks for the info everyone. Based on this I could either 1) go nuts and create a bitmap engine to convert text to psuedo quickdraw from the II or 2) remember it's the future and I don't need to print from my IIc