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Sipix pocket printer [message #7027]

Tue, 04 February 2020 10:55

kareno
Messages: 19
Registered: October 2019

Junior Member

Does anyone remember the SiPix 'Pocket printer A6'?

My late partner was into Palm computers and bought one of these printers for portable hard copy.

They come with IrDa (kinda the predecessor to Bluetooth) but also had a standard serial connection.

It took quite some research to figure out how to drive it, but I succeeded in getting a PIC to translate plain text into the graphics commands expected by the printer. So now I have a simple ASCII printer for my 8 bit creations!

Free for non-profit use but I do not own the copyright on the font I've used.

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Re: Sipix pocket printer [message #7032 is a reply to message #7027]

Tue, 04 February 2020 21:52

Andrew B
Messages: 467
Registered: October 2015
Location: Near Redmond, WA

Senior Member
Administrator

That's cool. Add a mini-keyboard and you'd have a neat little retro teleprinter-style terminal. I see these printers are still reasonably priced in various places online as well.

[Updated on: Tue, 04 February 2020 21:53]

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Re: Sipix pocket printer [message #7034 is a reply to message #7032]

Wed, 05 February 2020 04:18

kareno
Messages: 19
Registered: October 2019

Junior Member

Hi Andrew,
Yes, these printers often turn up for sale online. And the thermal paper rolls are still available too.

The teleprinter idea has a problem. The SiPix printer prints whole lines at a time. It's also somewhat slow!

I guess you could make it print individual characters by not issuing line feeds and over-printing the same line repeatedly but I think it'd probably be even slower than an ASR 33! Great as a listing printer though Smile

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Re: Sipix pocket printer [message #7042 is a reply to message #7034]

Wed, 05 February 2020 18:35

scruss
Messages: 59
Registered: December 2015
Location: Toronto, Canada

Member

Neat!

I've used a bunch of the cheap import thermal receipt printers. Usually very simple TTL serial, and all use the same de facto subset of Epson's ESC-POS. Like most thermal printers they're line-oriented, so not so good for interactive use.

> Does anyone know what each of the pins on the 6502 CPU chip in the Apple II Plus does?
They all plug into the socket on the motherboard to keep the chip from drifting away. - c.s.a2 FAQ of yore

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Re: Sipix pocket printer [message #7045 is a reply to message #7042]

Thu, 06 February 2020 00:06

b1ackmai1er
Messages: 396
Registered: November 2017

Senior Member

Cool!

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Re: Sipix pocket printer [message #8169 is a reply to message #7045]

Fri, 01 January 2021 13:23

Garth
Messages: 29
Registered: April 2016
Location: Southern California

Junior Member

I've used the tiny Weigh-Tronix dot-matrix impact ribbon printers. They seldom show up on eBay anymore, and when they do they've gotten pretty expensive, but they have standard parallel or RS-232 interfaces.

http://www.agscales.com/components/com_virtuemart/shop_image/product/wp233.jpg

I also have a Star DP8340 which is somewhat larger, with paper 4½" wide. Both these printers have various modes like compressed, bold, etc..

http://WilsonMinesCo.com/ lots of 6502 resources

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Re: Sipix pocket printer [message #8181 is a reply to message #8169]

Sun, 10 January 2021 09:29

scruss
Messages: 59
Registered: December 2015
Location: Toronto, Canada

Member

Impact printers tend to be much more expensive, as they can work in demanding environments where thermal printers are useless. One day I'll snag a Shinshu Seiki EP-101 (the 1968 electronic printer that's the 'Ep' in Epson Wink

...

> Does anyone know what each of the pins on the 6502 CPU chip in the Apple II Plus does?
They all plug into the socket on the motherboard to keep the chip from drifting away. - c.s.a2 FAQ of yore

[Updated on: Sun, 10 January 2021 09:29]

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