HP97 The journey begins

[teenix]

Hi all,

Slow progress, I have been inundated with offspring requests, I thought by now they would have grown out of that :-)

Anyway, I have some free time again, and I don't know why I didn't think of it before, but I placed the tip of my soldering iron so that it just touched the old 19C printer paper and it immediately turned dark blue, so I guess it still works.

I was able to jury rig the 19C for printing, not an easy task with the design of it, and after some fiddling to get the data output right, I managed to get a printout.

It seems a bit blotchy, so that may still be paper, or it may be because I am using a 1A bench supply. I have a 5V 3A supply somewhere, so I'll try to hook that up and see if the extra current available will help.

The first line appears to be offset by 1 digit for some reason, but after that it prints in line. On the face of it, it doesn't make sense, but I haven't come across many easy outs for problems with this project so this looks like it will be another.

The text looks a bit wide, so I'll have to adjust the center point of the motor speed control.

Looking promising though.

cheers

Tony