TashTalk USB

[GameMan370]

I had to compile ghostscript to include the imagewriter profiles. They were removed from the default builds a while back.

That makes sense, I think that is why I was running GhostScript 9.20 since it was the last version to include the imagewriter profiles by default.
Anyways, I have updated to 10.07.1, do you have a link/guide on how to compile it to include the imagewriter profiles? I was using Macports to install/update

*Edit, when I type "gs -h", it does show the following ImageWriter profiles installed:
iwhi
iwhic
iwlo
iwlow
iwlq
iwlqc

But I still am unable to print, how strange

 

[Bolacore]

Sure!
I think the key part is probably:

I'm not sure if that means there is a problem with the version of Ghostscript I have installed. I will try re-downloading it to see if it makes a difference. Unless you think there might be some other issue?

Ahh yeah I think Ghostscript version 10 is the minimum for the newer "iwhic" driver that we rely upon - What Linux distro are you on? You should be able to get pre-compiled newer ones here too: https://github.com/ArtifexSoftware/ghostpdl-downloads/releases.

I should probably add some better error handling for this so we dont just silently swallow it, and add min version checking to flag this - but once you upgrade you should be good to go

EDIT: Ahh of course there was a new page Whoops. Anything new in the logs now that you have the above? I admittedly just pulled it in via "brew" - I think I am only checking the paths for the Homebrew one, not MacPorts. If you do "which gs" in a terminal shell, what path does it print?

 

[GameMan370]

Ahh yeah I think Ghostscript version 10 is the minimum for the newer "iwhic" driver that we rely upon - What Linux distro are you on? You should be able to get pre-compiled newer ones here too: https://github.com/ArtifexSoftware/ghostpdl-downloads/releases.

I should probably add some better error handling for this so we dont just silently swallow it, and add min version checking to flag this - but once you upgrade you should be good to go

EDIT: Ahh of course there was a new page Whoops. Anything new in the logs now that you have the above? I admittedly just pulled it in via "brew" - I think I am only checking the paths for the Homebrew one, not MacPorts. If you do "which gs" in a terminal shell, what path does it print?

I got it working!
Turns out the when I installed the latest version of GhostScript, it put it in /opt/local/bin/gs but it kept the old version 9.20 in /usr/local/bin/gs which TailTalk checks first. Once I deleted the old version, the printer came to life!

What a great way to end the day! I can't wait to play around with it tomorrow! Thank you so much for this device!

 

[Byte Knight]

Now I'm curious what sort of phone cables you and @iigs123 are using Either my Amazon Cheapy Special were made to the best quality phone cables had to offer, or I'm doing something different..

Ok, got a chance to hook up my MBP directly to my IIgs with a serial cable, and file sharing works again so my AppleTalk network with old phone cables was at least part of the problem. I'm able to print to my modern Brother laser printer but not to the emulated color LaserWriter. It goes through the "preparing data" screen but no "idle EtherTalk" screen ever pops up. Attached is the log of the emulated color LaserWriter failing followed by my modern Brother printer working.

 

[Byte Knight]

Anyone with a TashTalk USB want to test this one for me? https://classicstack.app/ - it's a port of my ClassicStack AFP server and client to typescript. You'll need a browser with Web Serial support (Chrome or Edge).
Open the webapp, press "Connect TashTalk", and select your TashTalk USB. You should be able to see "ClassicStack" show up in Chooser --> AppleShare. Use the Guest login.
If your Mac has sharing enabled, you should also see it show up in the LocalTalk section and you should be able to connect and mount your Macs volume.

I'm happy to report that this works with the IIgs too! On the vintage Mac side of things, it works fine on my LocalTalk network but if I enable the LocalTalk Bridge control panel to include my Ethernet network, the ClassicStack file server does not appear in Chooser.

 

[Bolacore]

Ok, got a chance to hook up my MBP directly to my IIgs with a serial cable, and file sharing works again so my AppleTalk network with old phone cables was at least part of the problem. I'm able to print to my modern Brother laser printer but not to the emulated color LaserWriter. It goes through the "preparing data" screen but no "idle EtherTalk" screen ever pops up. Attached is the log of the emulated color LaserWriter failing followed by my modern Brother printer working.

Was this on the special branch I gave you, or just the latest release? I think I see the issue as the paths diverge at the font listing where our emulator returns zero fonts and real printers we return a built in list of 35. I am guessing the IIgs does not appreciate that hah. Trivial fix thankfully but just want to check what I stage it against.

 

[NJRoadfan]

You can safely return the "Postscript 35" fonts on a query as Ghostscript usually bundles them anyway.

 

[Bolacore]

Yeah that's pretty much exactly what I did here: https://github.com/FeralFirmware/TailTalk/pull/66.

 

[Byte Knight]

Was this on the special branch I gave you, or just the latest release? I think I see the issue as the paths diverge at the font listing where our emulator returns zero fonts and real printers we return a built in list of 35. I am guessing the IIgs does not appreciate that hah. Trivial fix thankfully but just want to check what I stage it against.

That was the special branch I was testing.

 

[Bolacore]

Ahh cool - I just rebased your branch against the fix I merged in for the printer fonts. If you could try _once more_ I think it should work, and if so will get a new release out Thank you!

 

[ereuter]

Is there a documentation for the ethernet adapter selection in TailTalk? Is it possible to use an ethernet adapter in a modern Mac to speak EtherTalk directly, or does this feature have some other function?

I have a TashTalk USB connected to my EtherPrint-T and my EtherTalk Macs can see the server and printers, but a direct Ethernet connection would be faster.

 

[Bolacore]

nothing official as it’s a little less battle tested, but it should be the same as the LocalTalk side - just choose what interface you want it to listen on and push start.

I use it semi regularly with a USB to Ethernet adapter to transfer things to my PowerBook and it works pretty well. It does get a bit upset in the case your Ethernet side is also bridged to the LocalTalk side and TailTalk is running on both, but that’s just with the printer emulation options.

 

[ereuter]

Thanks. I didn't get it to work, but gave up pretty quickly. I'll give it another try with a dedicated adapter.

 

[adespoton]

I vaguely recall from my IWII manual that you can print colour in regular or high quality mode; I mention this because the pictures I've seen in the thread so far look like regular mode. In HQ mode, it'll go back and do another offset pass of all the colours to smooth out the dithering and the edges; I can't remember whether regular AND HQ mode were both 144DPI (I think they were), but the results of the extra pass were definitely an improvement.

There's lots of other neat stuff in the manual as well -- if all you want is text, the IWII flies when printing using its built-in fonts and track paper, for example.

 

[Byte Knight]

Ahh cool - I just rebased your branch against the fix I merged in for the printer fonts. If you could try _once more_ I think it should work, and if so will get a new release out Thank you!

It works!! It prints in B&W but I get the same results with my modern color printer, so I believe that's an issue with the IIgs itself.

 

[Bolacore]

I think I remember the same happening with driver 5.2 on Sys 6 - colour only appeared as an option with driver 7.x. Not sure if IIgs ever supported colour on the LaserWriter drivers, but maybe @NJRoadfan would know? But that is great that it works! Will get the last change merged in and make an official release tonight.

I vaguely recall from my IWII manual that you can print colour in regular or high quality mode; I mention this because the pictures I've seen in the thread so far look like regular mode. In HQ mode, it'll go back and do another offset pass of all the colours to smooth out the dithering and the edges; I can't remember whether regular AND HQ mode were both 144DPI (I think they were), but the results of the extra pass were definitely an improvement.

There's lots of other neat stuff in the manual as well -- if all you want is text, the IWII flies when printing using its built-in fonts and track paper, for example.

Oh I did not realise that - I was leveraging the "iwhic" driver from Ghostscript which I dont _think_ gives that option (I think it is the iwlow one) but I will have to dig in to the code to check.

Thanks. I didn't get it to work, but gave up pretty quickly. I'll give it another try with a dedicated adapter.

What one did you try with first? The names under macOS aren't super helpful and I never got it to work via WiFi (I think was separate from the known AppleTalk issues with it - never dove in to it much) but was always OK with the USB adapter. But I very well could be missing something with zone handling still, I dont think I have tested that on the EtherTalk side much.

 

[NJRoadfan]

The IIgs LaserWriter driver doesn't do color.

 

[adespoton]

Oh I did not realise that - I was leveraging the "iwhic" driver from Ghostscript which I dont _think_ gives that option (I think it is the iwlow one) but I will have to dig in to the code to check.

Ah, that explains it -- I think you're right; the Ghostscript driver just gives a stripped down set; because IWII is a serial printer and not a postscript printer, there's a whole bunch of commands it supports directly over the serial port that don't map to postscript at all.

 

[Bolacore]

So I dove in to their code a bit and it seems colour is only done at 72DPI (But black ink in the same print is 144DPI) and it seems deliberate, but I'm not entirely sure why thats the case. Will shoot the maintainer an email as I'm curious what the reasoning was behind it

 

[adespoton]

So I dove in to their code a bit and it seems colour is only done at 72DPI (But black ink in the same print is 144DPI) and it seems deliberate, but I'm not entirely sure why thats the case. Will shoot the maintainer an email as I'm curious what the reasoning was behind it

OK, that lines up with what I thought I was seeing. I know back in the 90s when I got my hands on the manual, I got it to do some pretty neat stuff just with Color QuickDraw, a serial port, and a few commands.

Maybe HQ mode did two passes of offset 72dpi, and the print driver actually sent two separate image streams due to memory constraints?