3 ms·
Even if you didn't have a free-standing cheap microcontroller, couldn't you do a "Winmodem" style scenario where the printer is a bag of dumb mechanical bits te
by hakfoo 5y ago
Even if you didn't have a free-standing cheap microcontroller, couldn't you do a "Winmodem" style scenario where the printer is a bag of dumb mechanical bits tethered to a PC doing all the heavy lifting in software?
- rasz 5y agoYou will like 1987 Atari SLM605/SLM804 Laser printers. They had no electronics inside other than the power supply. Instead a dongle was shipped with 19pin Atari ST DMA port (ASCI, very similar to SCSI) on one end, and 37 pin connector for the printer on the other. It contained two microcontrollers, Intel 8253 timer chip, Toshiba TC9142P dedicated Direct Drive Turntable motor controller :), bunch of buffers and some chips I cant identify. https://manualzz.com/doc/7345398/atari-slm804-service-manual--sep-1987- https://manualzz.com/doc/7345398/atari-slm804-service-manual... Unlike all the other printers up to late nineties there was no high level computing smarts neither in the printer nor in the dongle. It was a Software Defined printer fully controlled by Atari ST (computer UI froze during printing to maintain tight timings), just like post year 2000 HP LaserJet 1000 and later Windows "host based" non PCL printers. As a result of this Atari ingenuity you ended up with a combo of Atari ST computer, 640×400@71.25 Hz monitor, DTP software (for example Calamus) and a Laser printer costing less than just the Apple or IBM laser printer alone, and as a bonus it printed 2-3 times faster. So yes, 3D FDM printer at reasonable price was totally possible in late eighties leveraging cheap 16bit computers for control logic.