Connecting a ImageWriter II To a Modern computer

[johnklos]

In fact Apple's first LaserWriter was more powerful than the current Mac - it had a 12MHz 68000.  Being able to offload rendering to the printer frees up the Mac to get on with other stuff.  Would you have really wanted to tie up the office Mac - with its single tasking OS - while a 100 page document prints?

Sure! People knew you worked hard to get that 100 page document ready, so standing over the printer while enjoying a cup of coffee was a well deserved break that nobody could fault you for taking.

 

[bigmessowires]

Would you have really wanted to tie up the office Mac - with its single tasking OS - while a 100 page document prints?

Yes I would have, if it meant the LaserWriter could have cost significantly less than its $6995 price - that's over $15,000 in today's dollars! :O   If it were really a workflow bottleneck for some people, they could buy a second Mac to use as a dedicated print workstation. That would have cost $2599 for a Mac Plus in 1986. The rest who were content to drink coffee while printing could potentially have saved thousands of dollars on the cost of the LaserWriter.

 

[max1zzz]

Hmmm, Seems I have a problem

Printing from osx or windows i seem to get the fist 1/5th or so of the page fine, then it starts printing rubbish.

The printer is fine, If I print from my IIci it prints just fine, if i poke text at it over the serial port it prints just fine

Why don't apple and microsoft make their os's print to 1980's printers better! Jeeze......

 

[Gorgonops]

But since you know you already have a fairly powerful computer that's doing the printing, it seems much more logical to me to rely on that computer to do the heavy lifting and bake everything down to bitmap image which the printer draws on the page. And that would make printers much cheaper, by requiring them to have less CPU smarts and RAM than if they need to run complex Postscript programs.

Well, the thing is, when Postscript debuted you couldn't necessarily rely on the computer being powerful enough to rasterize complex documents. (Or even have enough RAM to hold the resulting bitmap.) While PostScript proper is sort of an unauthorized clone of Xerox's InterPress system, which included one of the first WYSIWYG text editors, the concept of a "page description language" to drive automated typesetting dates back to at least the early 1960's. (IBM's SCRIPT, TROFF, TeX/LaTex...) Originally these markup languages (which can be thought of as direct ancestors to things like XML and HTML) were used to drive phototypesetters that used optical "font disks" to create photographic negatives that were turned into metal offset printing plates but it was a very natural transition to go from that to digital rasterization-based systems driving Xerographic print engines when the technology caught up. A pretty brain-dead eight or 16 bit computer was sufficient to generate typeset pages using these markup languages so the ability to do it on your desktop even minus the WYSIWYG was a pretty big deal.

(WYSIWYG actually buys you very little if you want to use the system to generate documents automatically. Once you have the template you don't need much of a computer to accept the text streams from whatever sources and fit them into it.)

And, while less of an issue, the bandwidth limitations of the communication channels could actually be a problem. Localtalk, which is roughly middle-of-the-road in terms of speed of early 1980's printer interface ports, runs at around 30k a second so spitting out a letter size page at 300dpi will take a bit north of 30 seconds not counting rendering time. Might be able to subtract some if the bitmap is compressible. For mostly-text documents a Postscript printer with a fast engine could seriously outrun a printer that had to have bitmaps spoon-fed to it. (Most of the really early "dumb" lasers used something other than a normal printer port because of the speed limitations. Apple's early entry used SCSI, while Atari and NeXT used high-speed DMA ports.)

 

[max1zzz]

Right, i reckon my IW II is faulty.

It I set the serial rate to 1200bps it prints just fine, Just is to comically slow

I'm thinking it might have bad ram on it's logicboard and if it has to cache too much data it gets corrupted and starts spewing rubbish.

It's worth noteing this is my dad's printer he had with his plus back in the late '80's And he told me it was faulty, but I tested it and it seemed to be printing ok so I assumed it was ok, But I guess he was right....

 

[johnklos]

Your ImageWriter might be just fine, max1zzz. Check that handshaking is working. If the printer needs more time to process or print the data it is being sent, but the computer doesn't stop sending, you'll see exactly that problem.

 

[ScutBoy]

Agree with johnklos - you probably don't have correct handshaking. 1200 might be slow enough for the Imagewriter buffer to keep up.

Could be XON/XOFF or RTS/CTS. Been a long time since I've jiggled the neurons that had to do with serial connections.

Despite what some may say, those weren't _always_ the "good old days"

 

[Gorgonops]

It's depressingly common for those USB to serial adapters to have broken handshaking support, I wouldn't rule that out as well.

 

[Paralel]

According to the guide I have for the Imagewriter II:

Missing, Jumbled, or Random Characters-

These problems are caused by mismatched baud rates or mismatched data byte information (including data byte length, parity, stop bit, and start bit settings).

ImageWriter II DIP Switch Settings

                      SW2-1          SW2-2
300 Baud       Open             Open
1200             Closed            Open
2400              Open            Closed
9600             Closed           Closed

                                                 SW2-3
                      Open                                        Closed

Hardware Handshake Protocol           XON/XOFF Protocol

 

[Paralel]

I'm betting that if you switch the SW2-3 to closed so it will use XON/XOFF it will fix it. Its practically a guarantee that the setup you are using does not support the default Hardware Handshake Protocol.

If that fails, change the baud rate on the Imagewriter to match the rate that works on the hardware you are using. start a 2400 and work your way down.

 

[max1zzz]

Just tried setting flow control to XON/XOFF in windows xp and it printed just fine, The odd thing is I tried this under osx last night and it didn't work.....

Edit: Just tried installing the FT232R driver (Rather than relying on the one supplied with  OSX) And it prints just fine now

 

[Paralel]

Glad to hear its working correctly now.

 

[olePigeon]

Was about to suggest trying the manufacturer's drivers and/or a different adapter.  OS X is notoriously picky when it comes to USB to Serial adapters.

 

[bigmessowires]

Edit: Just tried installing the FT232R driver (Rather than relying on the one supplied with  OSX) And it prints just fine now

Now that it's working, could you (or anyone else) summarize what's needed to get an Imagewriter II working on a modern Windows or Mac computer? What printer driver, what cable, what data rate and flow control settings, what DIP switch settings on the printer? It sounds like you had to go through quite a bit of experimentation, but I'm not clear exactly what the final solution looked like. Thanks!

Edit: So we need to go USB to 8-pin mini DIN. I don't think there's any adapter that does that directly. Did you use something like a USB to DB9 converter, and then a separate (or home made) DB9 to 8-pin mini DIN adapter?

 

[Dandu]

I have tested with a USB to DE9 and DE9 to Mini DIN without problem (http://www.journaldulapin.com/2014/09/23/faire-fonctionner-une-imprimante-imagewriter-ii-sous-mac-os-x/).

You can find USB to Mini DIN, but there is many problems with drivers on modern Mac OS X.

For the parameters : 9600 bauds, no parity, 8 bits and RTS/CTS hardware. If you have a Image Writer II with LocalTalk, you must disable the LocalTalk card too. 

With Mac OS X it works with CUPS. And it works with a Raspberry Pi and CUPS (http://www.journaldulapin.com/2016/01/02/airprint-imagewriter-raspberrypi/).

 

[bigmessowires]

Thanks. I just remembered I already have a USB to DE9 and DE9 to mini-DIN 8 that I cobbled together for a long-forgotten Apple IIgs project. I think I was doing serial transfers to the IIgs with ADTPro, so I know this cable combination works for basic serial.

Are you sure about RTS/CTS? The poster a few messages back said to use XON/XOFF. My home-made cable doesn't connect the RTS or CTS pins. It looks like I can set the Imagewriter's DIP switches to select RTS/CTS or XON/XOFF.

Have you ever tried printing from Windows to the Imagewriter? That's probably how I would use it.

 

[bigmessowires]

I found this, which claims to be an Imagewriter II driver for Windows 7, 8, and 10. But it looks a little dubious to me. http://semantic.gs/apple_imagewriter_ii_driver_download_2016

Or this: http://www.driversguru.com/driverdownload/C-Itoh%208510

 

[bigmessowires]

OK, my cable is working, and I can make the Imagewriter II print basic text from Windows by typing into a serial terminal and pressing return. But I'm not having much look finding a printer driver that will work for printing fonts and graphics. Both of the links I mentioned above are actually some type of driver auto-manager software that looks super scammy. I installed one anyway, and then didn't see any way to get an Imagewriter II driver from it.

From what I've read, the C-Itoh 8510 driver is supposed to work. I did find an old Windows 98 C-Itoh 8510 driver here: http://www.driverguide.com/driver/detail.php?driverid=57990. But it's a .drv file, and Windows 7 appears to expect Windows printer driver to be .inf files. I'm not sure if or how it would be possible to install that under Windows 7.

I was very surprised that Google turned up virtually zero mentions of people using an Imagewriter II with a modern version of Windows. The only half-useful reference was this one: http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/troubleshooting/66872-c-itoh-8510-dotmatrix-windows-8-upside-down-text.html

 

[Themk]

I just double-checked, my Socket 7 PC with Win2K has the C-Itoh 8510 driver. At least that one is NT-based, like modern windows, I'll see if there is a way to extract the driver from Win2K.

 

[jack]

My ImageWriter II works fine in CUPS using the iwhi driver in Ghostscript (you need 9.20, 9.21 removed it for some reason....)

You could always plug your ImageWriter into a Raspberry Pi or something running CUPS, and add that as a printer on your Windows box. Plus, then you've got the added advantage of network printing!