Lmst

I’m a dollar short and a day late, but better late than never! With only a little over a day left to go, I have my #imagewriterii on #globaltalk too! Find it at DeereGreenZone. #MARCHintosh

Printing another Print Shop banner because you can never have enough banners 😆

Sound on for dot matrix ASMR

#RetroComputing #ImageWriterII #PrintShop

ASCII art color wheel on ImageWriter II

#RetroComputing #ImageWriterII #ASCIIArt #VintageApple

A linear color wheel printed as ASCII text on a CMYK dot matrix printer.

A linear color wheel printed as ASCII text on an ImageWriter II dot matrix printer with sheet feeder attachment.

Adjusting the CPI and LPI to get more characters.

#RetroComputing #ImageWriterII #ASCIIArt #Art

ASCII art from a dot matrix ImageWriter II in color of a pink flower in a green bottle.

Detail from an ASCII art from a dot matrix ImageWriter II in color of a pink flower in a green bottle. The detail show the flower closeup is made from ASCII text with the four CMYK colors overlapped.

Detail from an ASCII art from a dot matrix ImageWriter II in color of a pink flower in a green bottle. The detail show the bottle closeup is made from ASCII text with the four CMYK colors overlapped.

Some classics: ImageWriter II color ribbon X ASCII art

#RetroComputing #ImageWriterII #ASCIIArt

ImageWriter II color ribbon X ASCII art

#RetroComputing #ImageWriterII #ASCIIArt

A while back I wrote some Python to print directly to ImageWriter II & LQ printers, both mono and color over serial. It also seems to work over AppleTalk which is awesome!

I printed this BYTE magazine cover using MacPalette II and my Python script for comparison.

MacPalette II is better at color but mine is better at smaller details, like the text at the top.

#RetroComputing #ImageWriterII

New blog post: Fixing NOS ImageWriter II color ribbons. Long story short, I went back to foam! This post goes through my trials, failures, and success. Hope you find it useful!

https://biosrhythm.com/?p=2919

#RetroComputing #ImageWriterII #VintageApple #VintageMac

A composite of two images of the inside of ImageWriter II color ribbons. On the left shows disintegrated foam everywhere and a puke emoji. On the right is clean with new rollers and a starry eyed emoji.

I may have found a solution for the ImageWriter II color ribbon pinch rollers. The O-ring method just wasn’t working for me. Details soon after some more testing. ☺️

##RetroComputing #ImageWriterII

A letter size page on an ImageWriter II sheet feeder that says ImageWriter II Color! in rainbow colors followed by “This is” and a color name on each line for magenta, red, yellow, green, cyan, blue, and black in that color.

I got O rings from Home Depot (#70 3/4” OD, 9/16” ID) to go around the pinch rollers to replace the bad foam. It worked well with no friction on take up.

Now that the ribbon is all back inside the cartridge, there’s not enough torque to pull it from the other side of the cartridge. The O rings are loose and slip.

Anyone know a source for better O rings?

#RetroComputing #ImageWriterII

Open ImageWriter II color cartridge next to a small pack of O rings.

Close up of the pinch rollers from an ImageWriter II color ribbon cartridge showing rows of new O rings pinching and pulling the ribbon.

And the wind up.

#RetroComputing #ImageWriterII

An open empty ImageWriter II color cartridge with the color ribbon in a pile above it with a single loop threaded in.

Vacuum: 1
Ribbon: 0
😂

#RetroComputing #ImageWriterII

ImageWriter II color ribbon cartridge open with the ribbon half in the cartridge and half on the floor and partially inside a vacuum hose. Whoops.

Still crumbly. Hmmm.

#ImageWriterII #RetroComputing

Inside a color ImageWriter II ribbon which has lots of yellow foam flecks stuck to it still.

“I fall to pieces” 🥴

#ImageWriterII #RetroComputing

A color ImageWriter II ribbon with top removed showing a color ribbon winding back and forth with crumbling foam pieces distributed everywhere inside.

Close up of a color ImageWriter II ribbon with top removed showing a color ribbon winding back and forth with crumbling foam pieces distributed everywhere inside.

Two ImageWriter II color ribbon pinch rollers removed with crumbled foam bits everywhere.

Uh oh. No back cover on my newly acquired ImageWriter II 🙁. Clearly been off for a while and in storage as there’s rust in there. #Apple #imagewriterII #retrocomputing #vintage #dotmatrix

Vintage Apple ImageWriter II. Alas, no back cover.

This animation shows the simulated output of CUPS ImageWriter II DitherPPI setting approximately from 2 to 31. After that, it changes to a more posterized dither and is the same for any larger value. You can see the dithering dots start very large and shrink down with each new value.

#RetroComputing #VintageApple #VintageMac #ImageWriterII

I was able to tweak the output of the ImageWriter II prints from CUPS to be slightly better. I've updated the blog post.

https://biosrhythm.com/?p=2791

#RetroComputing #VintageApple #VintageMac #ImageWriterII

Two simulated test prints of Margaret Hamilton standing next to a stack of books. The top print is dark (labeled CUPS iwhi no changes/default). The bottom print is lighter with more clarity (labeled CUPS iwhi with DitherPPI: 31).

This Python script will convert an ImageWriter II data stream/capture into a TIFF file. This was incredibly handy for running multiple tests without needing to actually print it on the printer to see the results.

https://github.com/shysaur/ImageWriter2/blob/2f34b9174de10b2a22d825854159468a5a3c45e2/TestOutput/imwii_sim.py

#RetroComputing #VintageApple #VintageMac #ImageWriterII

Ok, so this centipede printer workflow isn’t really reliable so I dove into CUPS to try and see if there’s a way to alter the dithering.

I tried adding different settings to the PPD file but nothing produced any changes.

Until I added “DitherPPI” (a GS option) and it produced a result that was pretty good! I tried various values (30, 80, 120, 180) but they all looked identical. In any case, this is good enough for me!

#ImageWriterii #RetroComputing #VintageApple #VintageMac #netatalk

Image showing three different test prints of Margaret Hamilton smiling next to a stack of code. Labeled from top to bottom: "CUPS iwhi with DitherPPI: 30," "CUPS iwhi no changes,” and “MacPalette.”

Subjectively, the top and bottom are much better than the middle (default).

The way it works is this:

1. A print is initiated from a device to the CUPS-PDF driver on my #netatalk Raspberry Pi.
2. The resulting PDF is placed in the AFP share of netatalk/afpd.
3. An emulated PPC Mac 9.2.2 running the #AppleScript below is watching for new files in that folder and will print them using Acrobat Reader to the #ImageWriterII via #LocalTalk using the MacPalette II driver.

It works, but crashes with dialog that I can't auto-dismiss.

#RetroComputing #VintageApple #VintageMac

#ImageWriterII

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