I am dusting off my Apple //c and wonder if any information has been posted about printing to modern printers.
i have the keyspan USB cable to connect to my Apple //c that I have used for ADTPro purposes.
Any information links would be appreciated. Thank you.
That USB cable isnt going to help you here. I take it your using the Din serial cable connected to the modem port to connect to your modern computer?
The IIC is limited as you cannot add expansion cards. You have to use whats built in, and that would be the serial interface. You can adapt it to connect to any printer that uses serial printing. That is a wide range, even the first HP laserjets had serial ports. But nothing modern. If you had a full size apple II you could add a parallel card and that would grand you access to printers using parallel connectors running into the early 2000's but still nothing new.
I am pretty sure there was a localtalk card for the Apple IIe which allowed you to connect to a Macintosh Local talk network which would share any printers connected as well but that wont do you any good. Does the IIc have localtalk support? I would assume not, expecially the first Rom revisions. But I cant say 100%
They started to build in some AppleTalk support in ROM0 machines. But I don't believe any hardware was released for it. And due to that I think they also removed what little support there was in a later ROM version.
If you tracked down a parallel port printer, they made external serial to parallel converters. I still have my childhood parallel printer (which I swapped out recently for an ImageWriter II since I can still get ribbons unlike my old printer) and a Kameleon serial to parallel converter I used with my //c.
Well if you were near CT/USA and wanted a free ImageWriter II Id give you one. I have... I dunno 8 or 9 at this point. I cant give these things away.
I was not notified of these replies; I just happened to come over to this Site again.
Thanks for all the information: I will pass on the Imagewriter offer!
No AppleTalk on the //c
I do have the Grappler //c but no parallel printer to use it on
Isn't there some way to "print to file" on the //c, move it over to my Mac and then print it from there?
Hah! Thats a big no.
How do I get notified by email that a "reply" has been posted here?
Some years ago, my ex-wife needed the costs of a remodel that we did to our home over three years in the mid-1980s.
Back in those days, I had moved from the very slow Home Accountant, to the very fast Time is Money. But the problem with Time is Money is that it is all in one: that is, the program and data are combined into one disk (or more if needed), which made it so fast.
The way I solved the problem back then was to use Gerald Putter's fine virtualization program on my Mac: Virtual ][.
Gerald got Time is Money to run in Virtual for me and I converted all of my Time is Money diskettes from Apple ][ to the Mac.
I then ran each year's Time is Money in Virtual and created "reports" of all of the years expenses and then "printed" them using Virtual.
But instead of printing them to paper and then having to hand manipulate the data, I used the Mac printing dialog box to print to a PDF file and then converted the PDFs to Excel.
I could then manipulate, sort and make a full report of the expenses spent for my exwife in Excel.
So it seems to me that I could work on the Apple //c in a particular program; save the data file, move that file over to my Mac, open the data in Virtual ][ and print in color on my Epson Artisan 810.
I'll have to give it a try...
Use the 'subscribe' link at the bottom of the first post.
Relief may be on the horizon. The MAME project are actively working on emulating printers and are having good results. The output looks to be PDF so theoretically, at the end of their work you'll be able to connect a real Apple II to a system via serial, print, and have the output as a PDF.
MAME emulates the weirdest things these days :-)
Chesh
Well subscribing sure helps! hahaha
And it is amazing what can be done when one or more are stuck inside during a pandemic!
I am just suprised they waited this long to work on this, but beggars cannot be chosers! :)
My Floppy EMU just arrived yesterday and a modern power supply, cigarette lighter cable and a modern Apple //c printer output to composite video cable should arrive in the next two weeks.
I will then be able to fire up the 3 Apple //c's in my collection and see which ones, if any still work; and if not, mix and match to get one to work!
I have to admit that Virtual ][ on my Mac made me lazy about using my actual Apple //c's, but I am excited about the prospect of opening some old Dazzle Draw and WordStar files and being able to print them again!
Thank you for that vision of the (hopefully near) future!
USB Printer is probably a hard no. You may be able to rig up a way to read output to a PostScript file, but I'm unsure. You can use something more modern than an ImageWriter, such as the StyleWriter series, or the Apple LASER printers, but the //c can't do what you want without a lot of intermediate steps, such as connecting it via serial to a PC, and capturing the CHR data passed via print commands in BASIC. IMO, the best printers for the //c are the ImageWriter, ImageWriter II, Scribe, and StyleWriter series.
With the StyleWriter, you can use the original model through the 2500. These were serial versions of Canon inkjets and you can refill them easily. ImageWriter printers are plentiful and cheap, and you can easily find them, but Tractor feed paper is expensive not, and for the ImageWriter II, I think that viable colour ribbons may now be scarce. Black ribbons are OTOH, still plentiful. Scribe ribbons are hit or miss, as they could be perfectly fine, or useless, depending on how they were stored, similar to wax thermal Okidata ribbons.
You may be best off using a disk image and printing your graphics using tools for editing Apple II images and text documents on Windows or Linux, if you need to use truly modern printers.
I'm still looking to replace my old SilenType, which IMO is one of the finest printers for the Apple II series, if all that you want to do is to dump code in memory to a hard copy. (The only thing that I now print from my ][ machines is hard copy of programme code.)
Thank you for all that information, but I get frustrated enough with my modern printer (sheet jams, feeder jams, etc.) so I am not really looking to go backwards on printing.
I just realized that my Epson Artisan 810* has an SD card reader built in and the Floppy EMU I just purchased arrived on Thursday.
Once I get my Apple //c fired up with an ordered power supply and build out the Floppy EMU, maybe there is a way to save a file on to the SD card of the Floppy EMU and then print it from there, bypassing the Mac altogether.
If not, I can always use my SD reader on my Mac to import the file and do whatever translation is needed before printing.
*Strangely enough Amazon is selling used Epson Artisan 810 printers from two providers for about $1,800 each! :)
Your printer won't be able to do anything with the files on the Floppy Emu card. They are all disk images stored there. The printer won't know how to read the disk images on the card, let alone inturpret anything printable stored within the disk image.
Well, in most software on the Apple II series you could save your text as a common text file (.txt). That is a standard that can be read by any modern computer and I would think your memory card enabled printer. AppleWorks 2.0 would be an example of such software.
Yes, I did much research on my printer last night and I found no capability to print anything other than photos off an SD file and no emulation of anything like the original Epson FX.
So, I am back to a solution like the MAME project; as Save to Disk.
I guess there was no Adobe Acrobat for the Apple II Series!
Actually after getting my parents to buy a Mac 512 with an internal Hyperdrive 20 MB hard disk for their business in 1985, I invested in some Adobe stock. I used the profits to buy my first Mac, the SE/30 in 1987!
Yes, of course, transfering text only files is an easy proposition, and I have access to the original wordprocessors from the II era.
But I am looking forward to printing some old graphics files as well.
Just arrived: a monitor cable for my Apple //c that connects to the video out port (for the Apple and C-Vue LED screens, one of which I own) to the composite video input for a better video experience. Now all I need is that power supply that I ordered...
I was one of the first attorneys to use a fax modem on my Mac and recipients would always be amazed at the better quality of my sent faxes (especially sine I would digitize Postscript).
It seems to me that Global Village and Apple's fax modems were only introduced for the Mac; but if one had the ability to connect to an Apple II with software, that could be one solution...
I'll research that idea.
How does the video out on that adapter look? Are you happy with it?
I'll let you know as soon as the power supply from eBay arrives in a week or so!
Someone else is selling an Apple //c VGA adapter, but it has been out of stock and this one is cheaper, so I ordered it.
Hopefully this one will work well with my 23" Samsung LED monitor.
My rechargable 12v Prairie Power Pack has needed a new lead-acid battery for years and I have misplaced the original brick power supply.
"But I am looking forward to printing some old graphics files as well."
Well, why not pull the graphic up on the screen of the //c, use the composite out to a video capture device (like the EyeTV line) attached to a comptuer from the last 15 years, and then print it out from there?
Just buy an old Apple serial printer. Problem solved. They are often given away or sold for the cost of freight. Anything fro the origina ImageWriter to the StyleWriter 2500 shoud work. What is it that you want/need to print?
The last thing I want is a legacy printer with all its historical problems, get it working and then try to find ribbons, etc.
I am looking to print graphics.
Documents that are text oriented, such as WP, spreadsheet, database, etc. can be easily run on Virtual II on my Mac and printed from there. Not so sure about graphics, but that might work, too.
Waiting for the power supply to arrive...
Sure, you can "print" graphics from Virtual II.
Virtual II will direct all printer output to a pdf file you can save and print on any modern printer, graphics included.
Yes, that is my hope, if I can find the original Programs that generated the graphics, either in my library or online.
As I mentioned above, that method "saved" me when I needed to access some Time is Money files from the mid-1980s. This program was very stingy about exporting data, but I was able to get Time is Money working on Virtual ][, with Gerald Putter's fine help, and printed annual reports of all transactions to PDF.
On the Mac I then sucked out the data to MS Excel and was able to do all the sorting I needed to access the data I needed.
FWIW, the original ImageWriter and IW II are very solid and I have never seen one with issues. The ribbons are bery common, and available for US$5 brand new. Basic pilosophy: Your can get an ImageWriter or IW II for next to nothing. You can have a fully capable printer for under £20.
I have never encuntered an Imagewriter with 'problems' that weren't easy to resolve.
If that isn't an option, fine, but if you see a cheap or free IW for SW printer, grab it.
The SilenType and Scribe are far more commitment heavy.
Wishing you the best, though. I sill need to replace my SilenType. Hae IM, IM2 and Scribe orinters, but the ease of printing to fax paper makes the SilenType attractive, as I have a very large box of paper for it, and the SilenType IO card. My output is only code, as hardcopy.
The only issue I have come across is having to rebuilt the foam rollers in the color ribbon. (black ribbons use plastic wheels while color ribbons use foam rollers which turn to mush) I know there was a kickstarter in the past and they remade color ribbons but I wasnt aware of them at the time. Maybe someone will do it agian.
My wish is that someone makes modern OS drivers for the image writer II so I can use it on windows and linux systems! That would be fun. And I have given up hope finding the individual sheetfeeder addon.
Back in the day my Imagewriter II had the Localtalk Option board installed, so that all of our computers on Localtalk (mostly Macs) could use it!
I see the local talk boards come up pretty regularly on ebay. Ill tell you if I could ever find that page feeder option, id then have a need for local talk. I am pretty sure I have a localtalk board for the apple II. Dunno, ill post pictures. If it is I really need to setup a local talk network. How modern (MAC OS) can you get with a local talk network? System 8? System 9? OSX!? I would like to have a mac network of some kind. Then figure out how to share with a bridge to windows networking.
Now I remember, I actually found a page feeder option once too on eBay and bought it! I did not use it much and sold it off with the Imagewriter II.
Trying to remember, but it seems that my Mac just printed to the Imagewriter II when both were connected to Localtalk and the Mac had the Imagewriter driver installed.
I never networked my Apple IIs, especially after I upgraded to my current Apple //c, which has no network option, so printing was always through a serial cable.
Well find the external Apple IIC localtalk options and maybe that could be your savior.
Good thought, but Appletalk was introduced in ROM 0, but never implemented in hardware, so it was removed for needed space in subsequent ROMs
Back about 5 years ago my original //c failed to boot, so I found an eBay seller selling two of them with a Unidisk drive, "not working," for a good price figuring that I coiuld mix and match parts and get one working.
That project got delayed at the time, when I found that Virtual ][ solved my problem back then.
Imagine to my surprise: one of them had an Applied Engineering Z-Ram board, but would not boot, so:
I removed the Z-Ram board and examined it closely and noticed that the ROM chip was Apple Copyright 1985. Since the original ROM 255 was Copyright 1983, this must be an upgraded 32 bit ROM chip, BUT the two required modifications to the motherboard were not performed, so I did the modifications and voila! It works!
I moved one of the better keyboards over and now I have a full operating //c with C/PM capability and an external 3.5" Unidisk, too, just like my original //c.
I attached the BMOW Floppy EMU in hard disk mode and now I can operate with 5-1/4" floppies, 3.5" floppies and up to 32MB HD storage on the Micro-SD card.
Moving the SD card over to my Mac Mini and using Copy utilities in Virtual ][ on my Mac I can now easily move files back and forth.
Next, I will attempt to convert a floppy to disk image and back using this method instead of the much slower ADTPro through Serial ports method, I have used in the past.
But this confirms that I can use the SD card as a "sneaker-net" for any type file; not just floppy images.
A IIc with a zram card.. You are pretty lucky. Cant imagine too many of those floating around. And the trouble is since its internal noone knows!
My Original //c has a Z-Ram as well. It was very lucky: I ran WordStar on it yesterday!
The extra memory is helpful in Appleworks, as well.