Re: Printing Hack

Article: 7566 of alt.hackers
From: szinger@circuit.mtc.eng.yale.edu (James Szinger)
Newsgroups: alt.hackers
Subject: Re: Printing Hack
Date: 30 Mar 1995 22:07:47 GMT
Organization: Yale EE Morse Teaching Center
Lines: 46
Approved: 666 times
Message-ID: SZINGER.95Mar30170747@circuit.mtc.eng.yale.edu
NNTP-Posting-Host: circuit.mtc.eng.yale.edu
In-reply-to: elessar@picard.cs.wisc.edu's message of 30 Mar 1995 15:08:53 GMT
Status: RO

Erik Geiger writes:

>I needed to print out the resume I'd done in MS Word on my Mac.

... [Print to disk, take disk to work, print to network printer] ...

>Perhaps this isn't as clever a hack as some of the Perl scripts I've
seen here,
>but I think it was at least marginally clever and made use of arcane
aspects of
>two platforms and their operating systems, so I figure it qualifies.

I was about to comment that this hack is trivial, but then I
remembered that part of my job description says something about
printer support in a heterogenous network environment, so I'm
overqualified to say that.  Then I remember that hacking is mostly
attitude: creative and imaginative solutions with limited resources to
new or unusual problems and a lacking of the word "impossible" in
one's vocabulary.

You were creative enough to find a solution to a new problem using the
tools that were available.  Thus it's a hack.  That it's a standard
solution elsewhere doesn't mean anything if you didn't know that
beforehand.

A hint if you do this again:  The Appple LaserWriter drive contains an
option to prevent the most common PostScript fonts from being included
in your output.  Things will go faster if you don't include a copy of
Helvetica or Times Roman in every PostScript file you generate.

ObWannaHack: I've just replaced my aged 80286 PC with a Mac.  The
thing is I think it would be nice, but meaningless, if I could hook up
my old daisy wheel printer to my Mac.  If my memory is right, the
serial port on the printer is a TTL level affair connected to the
printer's 8085 CPU.  I think it's time to RTFM for the printer so I at
least knopw what I'm up against.  Does anyone know where I can find
the serial port specs (pin-out and voltage levels) for the Mac?  Maybe
if I RTFM for the Mac I might find an answer.  I would really hate to
damage my Mac by blowing up a serial port.

OBHack: Installing AIX on an RS/6000 with no removable media and a
non-standard network.

Ciao,
Jim
--
James Szinger, SECF Support Specialist
James.Szinger@Yale.edu, szinger@minerva.cis.yale.edu

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