Stuart Longland (VK4MSL) on Nostr: I was thinking about how to do on-paper logging for emergency comms work, and got ...
I was thinking about how to do on-paper logging for emergency comms work, and got thinking about printers.
Today's printers assume they'll get a page full of pixels at a time, and can simply dump those in pigment form on the page. Some have printer languages like PostScript for describing the full page, but the end effect is identical: they speak in single "pages". Nothing comes out until it has a full page of text.
Power glitch half-way through? Bad luck, please send again.
What doesn't? The old printers, dot-matrix in particular.
I dig one we happened to have in the cupboard out: a Star LC-10II.
Did a search on the Internet, sure enough, there's a handbook, full of Microsoft BASIC (probably GW-BASIC not QBASIC) examples of how to drive the thing.
https://www.minuszerodegrees.net/manuals/Star%20Micronics/dot_matrix/Star%20Micronics%20-%20LC-10II%20-%20Users%20Manual.pdfI miss that level of detail in a user manual.
Now I wonder if I can convert this thing to run on 12V unregulated DC and rig it up with a RPi Pico driving the LPT port so I can just spit text at it over USB and have it print each log as it comes in from the field?
#RetroComputing #AmateurRadio #EmergencyComms
Published at
2026-03-14 00:07:20 UTCEvent JSON
{
"id": "eb8afdebc6b1afb121ce4103e90ba8909a5bbd401d6e53a92795fa8e2d4238e3",
"pubkey": "54e8ecdf233aeff783f2894eb63943db8238c447956b1f850a3989c15b292b6d",
"created_at": 1773446840,
"kind": 1,
"tags": [
[
"t",
"emergencycomms"
],
[
"t",
"amateurradio"
],
[
"proxy",
"https://mastodon.longlandclan.id.au/@stuartl/116224612143786925",
"web"
],
[
"t",
"retrocomputing"
],
[
"proxy",
"https://mastodon.longlandclan.id.au/users/stuartl/statuses/116224612143786925",
"activitypub"
],
[
"L",
"pink.momostr"
],
[
"l",
"pink.momostr.activitypub:https://mastodon.longlandclan.id.au/users/stuartl/statuses/116224612143786925",
"pink.momostr"
],
[
"-"
]
],
"content": "I was thinking about how to do on-paper logging for emergency comms work, and got thinking about printers.\n\nToday's printers assume they'll get a page full of pixels at a time, and can simply dump those in pigment form on the page. Some have printer languages like PostScript for describing the full page, but the end effect is identical: they speak in single \"pages\". Nothing comes out until it has a full page of text.\n\nPower glitch half-way through? Bad luck, please send again.\n\nWhat doesn't? The old printers, dot-matrix in particular.\n\nI dig one we happened to have in the cupboard out: a Star LC-10II.\n\nDid a search on the Internet, sure enough, there's a handbook, full of Microsoft BASIC (probably GW-BASIC not QBASIC) examples of how to drive the thing.\n\nhttps://www.minuszerodegrees.net/manuals/Star%20Micronics/dot_matrix/Star%20Micronics%20-%20LC-10II%20-%20Users%20Manual.pdf\n\nI miss that level of detail in a user manual.\n\nNow I wonder if I can convert this thing to run on 12V unregulated DC and rig it up with a RPi Pico driving the LPT port so I can just spit text at it over USB and have it print each log as it comes in from the field?\n\n#RetroComputing #AmateurRadio #EmergencyComms",
"sig": "02d2a6a8d4c05cb6503467bc5b42d3fe36e591529ebf8dced6b9cc9fa9ffa7e99a50d11450ea5e4d567c5cb13b9b6da91676b631094f707ee00bb10f7cea9b33"
}
