On 9/2/21 6:43 am, ropers wrote: > * Printer steganography -- which I've positively confirmed is indeed there, > and which I neither asked for, nor was at any time told anything about by > Xerox, especially not pre-purchase.
I think this is situation normal for any printer made this decade. Don't like it? You have three choices: 1. Find a way to coax an ancient parallel port printer to work with your modern Unix workstation. 2. Make your own printer. 3. Don't print. (1) could be achieved two ways: (1a) using either a standard LPT-to-<something> adaptor. (e.g. LPT-to-USB, there are also LPT print servers that present an lpd interface) (1b) with off-the-shelf modules to interface to the Centronics interface on the printer (which is 5V TTL IIRC) to one of the myriad of 5V-TTL compatible microcontroller dev boards out there and doing some hacking of the print spooler in OpenBSD along with some firmware development. (2) has been done various ways (e.g. HomoFaciens on YouTube did a junk-box printer using a pen, scrap motors, hand-made optical encoders and an Arduino dev board)… admittedly resolution and print speed are both poor in such systems unless you're very mechanically and electronically skilled. You may also have to forgo conveniences such as an automatic sheet feeder or out-of-pigment notifications. Many people are doing (3) now, having decided they don't use a printer often enough to justify the cost of maintaining one. -- Stuart Longland (aka Redhatter, VK4MSL) I haven't lost my mind... ...it's backed up on a tape somewhere.
