LisaList2

General Category => LisaList2 => Topic started by: blusnowkitty on September 01, 2021, 04:40:41 pm

Title: IBM 3852 / Canon PJ-1080A
Post by: blusnowkitty on September 01, 2021, 04:40:41 pm
So I finally tracked down an OEM version of the 1080A, IBM's 3852. Hasn't gotten here yet, but I plan to take it apart and photograph the boards to see if there's any major differences between the 1080 and the 3852 that'd keep me from using it on a Lisa. I can already see that the 1080 has a set of configuration DIP switches on the back while the 3852 lacks them. Hopefully it's just they were removed from the board and the pads are still there. I also wouldn't be surprised if there were ROM differences between the two that can't be fixed by burning 1080 ROMs... More details to come soon.

On another note, anyone got a spare dual parallel port card? I picked up another Profile disk so now I'm running three ProFiles off mine... It feels weird to have a setup that would have cost around $21,000 new or $50,000 today.
Title: Re: IBM 3852 / Canon PJ-1080A
Post by: compu_85 on September 02, 2021, 10:08:25 am
You might find this thread I started on VCFed a while ago interesting:

https://www.vcfed.org/forum/forum/technical-support/vintage-computer-hardware/54535-looking-for-canon-pj-1080a-drivers-software

TLDR, the IBM and Canon printers have very different looking PCBs. I was not able to get the Canon printer to spit out anything intelligible using the IBM driver in Windows.

Note you need to use the "special" Lisa parallel printer cable. IIRC 2 of the status lines are swapped. (The same cable needed for the Apple Dot Matrix Printer)

-J
Title: Re: IBM 3852 / Canon PJ-1080A
Post by: blusnowkitty on September 02, 2021, 04:17:14 pm
Interesting. But it does look like that barring the PCB respin, the only changes are the IBM board lacks the DIP switches and appears to have picked up an extra OTP ROM. They're both still based around a 6809 so I can't imagine the two boards are very different electrically... I also can't imagine the boards being more than two layers, so might be possible to hack the DIP switches back in based on pictures of a 1080A board.

Do we have the pinout of the Lisa parallel printer cable? I can probably build an adapter cable so I can use my normal PC printer cables.

Failing all of the above... I have a traveling computer museum in the works and I can always throw this 3852 on my 5150 or 5170!
Title: Re: IBM 3852 / Canon PJ-1080A
Post by: stepleton on September 02, 2021, 04:24:25 pm
It's not convenient now (this month is very busy, especially this weekend!) but I ought to be able to determine the pinout without too much trouble. I repurposed one of those chunky A-B switches for 25-pin DB-25-terminated cables as a kind of patch panel for this kind of cable-hacking, and while I have no recollection at all of how I determined the correct cross-connections, it works now and that's what counts. It's not too hard to pop the lid off and see what connects where, and I'm happy to do that if nobody else passes along the answer first. Sorry I can't do it right away, though!
Title: Re: IBM 3852 / Canon PJ-1080A
Post by: compu_85 on September 02, 2021, 04:39:08 pm
Tom, here's a post you'd made on the old mailing list https://groups.google.com/g/lisalist/c/UkF3J1jNTew/m/ZzL2z20zCwAJ :

"James's change to my adapter --- moving Lisa pin 16 from PC pin 11 (\BUSY) to PC pin 10 (ACK) --- results in color printouts from the Lisa to the Canon printer! "

I posted this link to Apple's tech site, which gave me trouble initially... https://support.apple.com/kb/TA30884

James copied the text into a reply:

Anticipating its disappearance, most notable on that page is this cable pinout:

     P/N 590-0042-B (DMP)

DB25 Connector         AMP36
   (Male)             (Male)
     2 ---------------- 19
     5 ---------------- 2
     6 ---------------- 3
     8 ---------------- 4
    11 ---------------- 7
    12 ---------------- 8
    13 ---------------- 9
    15 ---------------- 1
    16 ---------------- 10
    18 ---------------- 35
    19 ---------------- 12
    21 ---------------- 13
    22 ---------------- 5
    23 ---------------- 6
    24 ---------------- 16
    25 ---------------- 32


I've attached a text file with the pinouts listed on that page.

-J
Title: Re: IBM 3852 / Canon PJ-1080A
Post by: stepleton on September 02, 2021, 05:16:29 pm
Ha, great find! I'm disappointed that I didn't remember that my success simply owed to other LisaListers' helpfulness. Of course I should have suspected nothing else!
Title: Re: IBM 3852 / Canon PJ-1080A
Post by: rayarachelian on September 02, 2021, 07:08:21 pm
Tom, here's a post you'd made on the old mailing list https://groups.google.com/g/lisalist/c/UkF3J1jNTew/m/ZzL2z20zCwAJ :

"James's change to my adapter --- moving Lisa pin 16 from PC pin 11 (\BUSY) to PC pin 10 (ACK) --- results in color printouts from the Lisa to the Canon printer! "


Here's the local link to it: https://lisalist2.com/lisalist1/2329.html

:)
Title: Re: IBM 3852 / Canon PJ-1080A
Post by: blusnowkitty on September 04, 2021, 04:19:34 pm
Alright, so I got my 3852 in today! Unfortunately it is the later revision with the two ROM chips. Initial playing around with it suggests it's not going to be as easy as whacking in a 1080A ROM and calling it good. With the IBM ROM in place (a 27C128), you can remove the OTP ROM and it'll still boot (I dunno if it'll print, but) however, once you slap in the 1080A ROM on either a 2764 or a 27128 (or a 27256), then the printer behaves as if there's no ROM installed - all status lights on.

Based on the pictures over on VCF, it looks like the 3852 has a lot more RAM onboard than the 1080A - I wonder if the start of ROM is in a different place on the 3852 than the 1080A?

On a more practical note, what's a good way to clean out the printhead lines? It looks like old ink dried up in the lines over the years. I'm also wondering what would be a good replacement foam for the black cartridge? I cleaned out mine but when it dried, the foam turned hard and shrunk.
Title: Re: IBM 3852 / Canon PJ-1080A
Post by: compu_85 on September 05, 2021, 05:27:34 pm
You could use a kitchen sponge or some other absorbent pad.

The ink is water soluble. You could try pushing a lot of water through the lines if they're super gunked up. I had to do this on a slightly later Canon printer to get it going again that used a similar cartridge and flexible line setup (A BJ130e).

-J
Title: Re: IBM 3852 / Canon PJ-1080A
Post by: blusnowkitty on September 06, 2021, 03:46:01 pm
You could try pushing a lot of water through the lines if they're super gunked up.

I think I need to figure out how to do this. I got the CMY lines working reliably but the K line won't print. If I watch the purge lines on the right side of the lever, the CMY lines are solid with no bubbles, but the K line only shoots out a little spurt of ink and then goes dry again. Interestingly the supply line going to the print head is solid with no bubbles as far as I can tell.

On another note, the OTP ROM is indeed the character ROM. Which makes me wonder if I can pull a Foone and make this printer print in Comic Sans... https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1347408722033745921/photo/1
Title: Re: IBM 3852 / Canon PJ-1080A
Post by: stepleton on September 06, 2021, 04:07:20 pm
This sounds awfully similar to the situation I had with the M line in my PJ1080A last week. That blotting procedure I described did the job for me, but it could be that your problem lies elsewhere in the plumbing.
Title: Re: IBM 3852 / Canon PJ-1080A
Post by: blusnowkitty on September 06, 2021, 08:45:32 pm
Well, it works! K is still a little iffy but it is printing again, and it's printing pretty well for being 40 years old! The VCF thread says that the 3852 ESC codes still correspond to the 1080A's, so tomorrow I'll get off to the electronics shop and see if I can build a Lisa to PC adapter cable.
Title: Re: IBM 3852 / Canon PJ-1080A
Post by: compu_85 on September 07, 2021, 08:14:25 am
That looks really good! The IBM font looks a bit nicer than the Canon one.

You might want to replace the foam "bumpers" on the edges of the mechanism. I used self-stick window gasket for mine. On the Canon the printer recalibrates often by moving the head left as far as it will go.

-J
Title: Re: IBM 3852 / Canon PJ-1080A
Post by: blusnowkitty on September 07, 2021, 08:11:23 pm
You might want to replace the foam "bumpers" on the edges of the mechanism. I used self-stick window gasket for mine. On the Canon the printer recalibrates often by moving the head left as far as it will go.

So does the 3852 I believe.

So I built myself a DMP cable according to the pinout above, and no dice. I'm seeing the same failure method that Tom did back in LisaList1 where the Lisa takes several minutes to error out on printing. Verified that everything is where it should be with a multimeter and nothing. I may try moving 16->10 to 16->11 and see if that does anything - can't imagine it would given the results in LisaList1, though...

ETA: Switched the pins. With the pins switched, the Lisa instantly says that the printer is not connected.
Title: Re: IBM 3852 / Canon PJ-1080A
Post by: blusnowkitty on September 08, 2021, 06:53:59 pm
Does anyone here have an original DMP cable and would they be able to verify the pinout? I'm now curious if the schematic on Apple's website is correct - building the cable according to the document seems to have an error where it says Pin 21 on the Lisa should go to Pin 13 on the Centronics. However Pin 13 on a Centronics is SELECT, where Pin 31 is the RESET line. This seems to be backed up by Tom's work in the LisaList1 thread saying Lisa Pin 21 should go to PC Pin 16 which is indeed the RESET line on a PC-style cable. Once I moved RESET from 13 to 31 I started seeing the printer resetting on power-up. However I'm still not getting any output from the printer even after moving BUSY from 11 back to 10 (ACK) on the Centronics.
Title: Re: IBM 3852 / Canon PJ-1080A
Post by: Lisa2 on September 09, 2021, 04:16:38 pm
Does anyone here have an original DMP cable and would they be able to verify the pinout?

The pinout for this cable ( 590-0042-B) is correct.   See attached photos.  Also note that when I played with this in the past I did not connect pins 16 or 35 on the printer side ( I don't remember if this helped or not).  Maybe you can try this on your cable.

Rick

Title: Re: IBM 3852 / Canon PJ-1080A
Post by: blusnowkitty on September 09, 2021, 09:53:46 pm
Thanks Rick! I'll try rebuilding my DMP cable to see what happens. Interestingly there's still an error in the text on Apple's website - they omit Pin 14. I see in the printed document that Pin 14 on the Lisa is GND, and that gets tied to BSY on the Centronics side. Although strange is that Tom's adapter pinout leaves BSY floating and it still works for him, but he's also got a proper 1080A.

I think my next step here is going to be breadboarding up a bunch of LEDs in between the Lisa and the printer just to make sure data is flowing to the printer. I'm also wondering if the 1080A driver sends something that the 3852 doesn't like? On the other hand that shouldn't be the case. The Generic / Text Only driver in Windows does make it print.
Title: Re: IBM 3852 / Canon PJ-1080A
Post by: compu_85 on September 28, 2021, 01:31:02 pm
I just beeped out my cable,

ptr | db25
1   15
2   5
3   6
4   8
5   22
6   23
7   11
8   12
9   13
10   16
11   14
12   19
13   21
14   na
15   na
16   na
17   na
18   na
19   2
20   na
21   na
22   na
23   na
24   na
25   na
26   na
27   na
28   na
29   na
30   na
31   na
32   25
33   na
34   18
35   na


db25 | ptr
19   2
2   5
3   6
4   8
7   11
8   12
9   13
11   14
10   16
34   18
12   19
13   21
5   22
6   23
32   25

-J
Title: Re: IBM 3852 / Canon PJ-1080A
Post by: blusnowkitty on July 11, 2022, 09:29:24 pm
Bit of a bump, but just to bring this full circle...

Haven't had time or money to make an interposer board to signal snoop, not sure if I'll bother. I did snag a couple of those official Apple printer cables and they came in just now, and the behaviour between the official cable and my attempts at rewiring a PC cable yielded the same results. Whoever said it was right - I guess IBM wrote (or commissioned Canon to write) a totally new ROM with no backwards compatibility for the 1080A print codes. Disassembling the 1080A ROM to hack it into the 3852 memory map is not my forte either... I guess the hunt is on for a proper 1080A.
Title: Re: IBM 3852 / Canon PJ-1080A
Post by: blusnowkitty on January 07, 2023, 12:19:57 pm
Another bump. Got something very special this morning...

Case is in somewhat rough shape, but electrically and mechanically seems to be fine. I can probably swap parts around with my 3852 to make one nice looking 1080A. Has the manual and two new cartridges as well though I threw in my IBM carts in this picture since I knew they were full of brand new ink from when I was playing with the 3852.

There's one other difference between the 1080A and the 3852 besides the main board and ROM differences - IBM apparently specced up the paper path to have tractor feed sprockets; the 1080A doesn't feature those at all. It'll still print on tractor feed paper but it has a bad tendency to skew.

Thanks Ray.
Title: Re: IBM 3852 / Canon PJ-1080A
Post by: compu_85 on January 07, 2023, 02:57:43 pm
Sweet!