Thanks, Adam:
It's worse than that. I've tried to get many different printers
working under Linux (which generally has pretty good hardware support)
and it turns out that a lot of manufacturers cut corners on their
devices and don't support standard print protocols like PostScript or
PCL, and instead use a lightweight translation layer to pass the
drawing calls in the Windows API over to the hardware.
I've read that my Brother HL-3150CDN laser printer only does GDI!
It basically means there are a number of (usually cheap) printers out
there that will only work under Windows.
Ubuntu Linux prints to it OK. But apparently not my old PC running FreeDOS!
If you can find a modern printer that supports both
PostScript and PCL, there's a fair chance that you can still get a
parallel port interface adapter for it too so you won't need the USB
drivers anyway.
So what is a purchasable printer suitable for printing from FreeDOS on
bare-metal?
They're usually aimed at industrial/point-of-sale type
users where the modern equipment still all uses the traditional
interfaces.
I suppose something like this could list text.
{This is a thermal printer like you would find on a cash register or
adding machine. It will print simple strings passed to it via TTL
serial, bitmap images (poorly) and it can generate several different
formats of barcodes. This model can even print QR Codes!
The thermal printer takes 2.25" (57mm) wide thermal paper with a max
roll diameter of 1.5" (39mm). Thermal paper is inexpensive and commonly
found in most office supply stores in 85ft lengths. You may have to
remove some paper from these rolls in order for it to fit into the
printer. But, you can always use the excess paper in the printer, since
you don’t need to have a ‘core’ in the paper for it to work.
The back panel has 2 3-pin connectors; one for power and one for serial
communications. The thermal printer ships with default 19200bps baud rate.}
https://www.littlebird.com.au/products/thermal-printer-84b894b4-36b0-4928-a565-421143317622
--
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