I'm really living in the future, I printed from my handheld computer

a day ago by TurboWafflz to c/retrocomputing

Picture of an Apple Imagewriter printer with printed paper coming out and a Palm m105 sitting in its dock placed on top of the printer

vext01 15 points a day ago

We used to print to the college printers using infrared from our psion pdas. Bypassed the printer accounting software, so printing for free!

Good times.

save

path: 0 26281451, hotness: undefined, score: 15, children: 0

Zachariah 8 points a day ago

your couch doesn’t look very comfortable

save

path: 0 26281311, hotness: undefined, score: 8, children: 0

TrackenDaKracken 5 points 21 hours ago

Zooming in to understand that clear, plastic paper guide, I feel like it's a miracle it's survived intact all these years.

save

path: 0 26282546, hotness: undefined, score: 5, children: 0

mercano 4 points 20 hours ago

The original ImageWriter! I feel like these are much rarer than the ImageWriter IIs.

save

path: 0 26283308, hotness: undefined, score: 4, children: 1

turbowafflz 1 point 19 hours ago

I didn't even realize the original existed until I found this one at goodwill yesterday. I always figured the II just meant it was for the apple II not that it was the second one

save

path: 0 26283308 26284111, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0

thoughtfuldragon 4 points a day ago

You have the silent hill town fall printer

save

path: 0 26280779, hotness: undefined, score: 4, children: 0

Gmork 3 points 21 hours ago

This is really cool! I only have a Palm TX with the USB sync cable so I'm curious how you accomplished this?

I assume Palm is it attached to some parallel port adapter or something?

save

path: 0 26282568, hotness: undefined, score: 3, children: 2

turbowafflz 2 points 19 hours ago

The Imagewriter is a serial printer, so I just plugged the dock directly into the printer with a db25-de9 adapter

save

path: 0 26282568 26284056, hotness: undefined, score: 2, children: 1

Gmork 1 point 16 hours ago

I'm definitely going to have to look into this. I have a bunch of old Pocket PCs and I wonder if they would have a similar, simple solution.

I've of printed plenty of things through irda, but it would be neat to actually hook them up with a physical connection not to mention that would give me a wider variety of printers to choose from.

save

path: 0 26282568 26284056 26285710, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0

ktnjared 1 point 21 hours ago

@turbowafflz I still vividly remember the first time I printed from my Handspring Visor Edge to a printer using IrDA to an HP LaserJet in the office. Game changer for how I used a PDA after that.

save

path: 0 26282139, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0

arisu 1 point 21 hours ago

@turbowafflz Wow that printer uses endless paper? The marvels of modern technology!

save

path: 0 26282358, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0