Is an infrared printer still worth getting?

[toml_12953]

(10-15-2021 09:49 AM)Siegfried Wrote:  

(10-12-2021 08:04 PM)striegel Wrote:  This must sound like bragging, but I feel really lucky that I found one for only $18.00 back in 2018. Now, this one didn't come with a box, manual, or AC power supply but it arrived in great condition and even came with a nearly-full roll of thermal paper installed.

I got a B with repaired battery terminals for 40EUR including shipping last June and a fully boxed A (sold together with a box full of calcs) for about about the same. They seem to see less love in Europe.

There is a modern replacement that supports the HP IR protocol but when trying to buy one I was quoted a price of EUR 357 plus tax plus delivery which seemed a bit over the top. I had a suspicion that that might be for a pack of more than one but never got a reply when asking the vendor. As printers of this size and type are are sold for around 25-50 EUR on amazon, I wonder where that price tag comes from. Tinkerers could probably mod a modern printer to accept the HP IR protocol but you still would not gain any speed advantage as the printer won't send data any faster. I'll stick to my oldies for the time.

If you want to build your own interface, you can set up any USB-capable printer to work with HP "Redeye" IR. Then you don't have to modify the printer.

http://www.mh-aerotools.de/hp/red-eye/HP...rduino.pdf

[teenix]

Anyone tried these

cheers

Tony

[Gerson W. Barbosa]

(10-15-2021 01:18 PM)Thomas Okken Wrote:  (Is overclocking Pioneers even possible? When I was in college, the college bookstore offered a service where they would modify the oscillator and double the speed of 41s and Voyagers, but that was before the Pioneers came out...)

This software speedup, courtesy of Gene, worked on an early HP-42S I don’t have anymore:

http://www.rskey.org/gene/hpgene/hp42fast.htm

[Dave Britten]

There's also a hardware double speed mod for the 42S:

http://www.finetune.co.jp/~lyuka/interes...oublespeed

Might work on the 17BII and 27S too, but not quite as meaningful there.

[tcab]

(10-02-2021 03:51 PM)Eddie W. Shore Wrote:  … the Online emulator is a life/time saver. I use Free42 PC emulator for my DM42 programs.

There’s also the option of buying a modern, reliable Epson thermal printer that prints so fast it makes your head spin (think supermarket checkouts) - or other cheaper hobby thermal printers. They won’t interface with a real HP calculator of course but you can print to them from Free42 using my Print42 software https://print42.atug.com/ which has special Free42 support.

[BobVA]

(10-15-2021 01:18 PM)Thomas Okken Wrote:  Well, at least you might be able to keep DELAY set to 0 at all times!
How tolerant are such frankenprinters of abnormally high speeds, I wonder? Can they handle an overclocked 42S?

Delay: Yes! If you're tracing a series of manual calculations (e.g. checkbook) a modern printer doesn't make much of a difference (other than noise) but for longer printouts, where DELAY kicks in (programs listings, register print, etc.), it's significantly faster with DELAY set to zero.

Overclocking: That corrupts the underlying timing of the data signal, so printing isn't possible for something that's expecting an HP82240 compatible IR signal. See here. For a home built printer it should be possible to compensate for that in the software if the microcontroller is fast enough.

Since a couple of modern HP82240 compatible printers have been noted above, maybe Eric or Swiss Micros might consider carrying them at retail for us, if the prices are reasonable.