Modern thermal printer to emulate 82240B

[tcab]

I’ve developed a piece of software called Print42 to echo Free42's virtual tape to a real thermal printer. Bring back the old days of having a line by line printer tape for your calculator, but with modern fast, supported thermal printer hardware.

Supports both Free42’s text and GIF image virtual tapes modes, meaning you can plot HP42S graphs etc.

It runs on Mac and Windows 10 and has been a serious multi month, full time development effort. All the needed extra HP characters have been handcrafted and programmed for an Epson thermal printer etc. As such the premium version of the software will need to be purchased, however the free version does have its uses too, as a general log tailer with search feature, line by line annotations etc. Here is an example of tailing a regular (non Free42) log file, for example.



I have openings for a few beta testers, who will get the full software for free. They will need to already have a thermal printer or be prepared to buy an Epson thermal printer for their Mac or PC. There are links to buy the appropriate hardware on the print42 website. Please PM if you are interested in participating. For example an Epson TM-T20II should cost around USD $127 which is arguably cheaper than a second hand 82240B (I bought a second hand 82240B and it burned out on me soon after! See this thread This melted vintage printhead experience was one of the main inspirations for this Print42 project, actually).

PS. Thomas Okken will also get a free license, should he ever request one.