Success!

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! Example image below.

The quality is a little questionable for black, where a fuzz of "extra" dots turns up around areas that should be black, getting worse as printing continues. Color dots all look good. There are some reasons I can think of why this might be:

1. Not using the right kind of paper. Canon supplied special roll paper for this printer, which I don't have---I'm using ordinary tractor feed printer paper.

2. You use black more than you use the other colors anyway, so "print head fatigue" shows up quicker for black than it does for the other inks.

3. Black is just broken or "worn out" on my printer. (Although "refreshing" the print heads using the method inscribed on the paper roll cover seems to fix it.)

4. Black's getting knocked out of whack. The foam bumper at the end of the carriage for the print heads has degraded, so each time it slides to the end of the carriage, there's an audible "clunk". This shock might be perturbing the "aim" of the black nozzle. Replacing the foam would help cushion the load.

5. Who knows? Maybe a screw got loose.

Now that I have some access to the manual, I can see if there are any clues in there.

I don't know if James's fix works for multi-page documents; I might try that later. In any case, I did not change RESET and CHK.

--Tom

Example printout: from a certificate I made for a fundraising event for a local charity. I brought the Lisa in to work and printed these "thank you" certificates out (in black and white) on an Imagewriter. If only I had made this fix in time... except the inkjet turns out to be *extremely slow*.




On Thu, Dec 11, 2014 at 10:51 AM, Tom Stepleton <stepleton@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Jason,

I'd try it with James's recommended modifications, plus whatever else you can derive from the sources he cited.

I'm going to try again with James's input when I get home from work. Will post updates here...

--Tom

On Thu, Dec 11, 2014 at 10:39 AM, Jason Perkins <perkins.jason@gmail.com> wrote:
Tom,

Perhaps I should try such a wiring adapter with my DMP? I can't imagine there were any active parts in the Apple parallel printer cable. 

Could someone with a working parallel printer cable confirm the pinout Tom posted?

Thanks!

-J

On Wed, Dec 10, 2014 at 10:41 PM, Tom Stepleton <stepleton@gmail.com> wrote:
Report: no joy with the adaptor as written.

One difference this time is that the Lisa takes a lot longer to decide that it's having trouble talking to the printer than it did before. With a "straight" cable, the Lisa's error dialog came up immediately. With the adaptor, the delay takes several minutes.

I suspect that all new behavior has to do with my inverting or not inverting certain essential signal lines. In particular, I note that Wikipedia says that parallel ports have a \BUSY pin (inverted), while the schematics James linked to show a BUSY pin (not inverted?). The Lisa might be waiting several minutes for the printer to change the state of BUSY, and timing out when that never happens.

Other factors may involve the cabling (about 1m unshielded ribbon to a patch box with spaghetti wiring implementing the adaptor, then 2.5m shielded cable to the printer---continuity checks OK, but there could be RF+other interference).


The printer also beeps at the beginning of every printout attempt, as well as on power-up and during boot. I suspect that this is because the Lisa is lowering \RESET during those moments, which "reboots" the printer. This may not be a problem.

I may have to postpone Lisa connectivity to this printer until such time as Santa gives me a logic analyzer... unless someone knows better or has some useful reference :-)

Cheers,
--Tom


On Wednesday, December 10, 2014 8:13:34 PM UTC-5, Tom Stepleton wrote:
Wow. Not that anyone would suspect it, but you are not kidding. Based on those resources, here is my first stab at what an adaptor would look like. XX means leave unconnected. "PC parport" means a DB25 female port that you could plug PC printers into.


Lisa   PC
par-   par-
port   port  Remarks
----   ----  -------
   1 - 18    GND
   2 - 19    GND
   3 - XX    {Lisa R/W, always W for printer}
   4 - 20    GND
   5 -  2    DATA_0
   6 -  3    DATA_1
   7 - XX    {Lisa unused, not connected}
   8 -  4    DATA_2
   9 - 21    GND
  10 - 22    GND
  11 -  7    DATA_5
  12 -  8    DATA_6
  13 -  9    DATA_7
  14 - 23    GND
  15 -  1    /STROBE
  16 - 11    /BUSY (may need to be inverted!)
  17 - XX    {Lisa CMD, unused by printer}
  18 - XX    {Lisa parity, unused by printer}
  19 - 18    {Lisa open cable detect, must be low; tie to ground*}
  20 - 24    GND
  21 - 16    /RESET (may need to be inverted!)
  22 -  5    DATA_3
  23 -  6    DATA_4
  24 - 25    GND
  25 - 15    {Lisa /CHK printer fault (may need to be inverted!)}

* IDEFile uses this trick.

Guess I'll give it a whack...

--Tom

On Wednesday, December 10, 2014 4:47:08 PM UTC-5, James MacPhail wrote:

It looks like the parallel port pinout of the Lisa is not the same as
the typical PC DB-25 parallel port, so a different cable will be
required...

PC:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/25_Pin_D-sub_pinout.svg

Lisa: (last page of)

https://ia601602.us.archive.org/17/items/bitsavers_applelisasarallelInterfaceCard_668809/029-0176-A_Lisa_Parallel_Interface_Card.pdf


>I just got a Canon PJ-1080A, known in Lisa-land as the "Canon Ink
>Jet Printer." No manual was included.

>I haven't had any success getting the Canon to work

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