#PenPlotter maintenance today. My HP 7585B stopped responding over RS-232. Diagnostics revealed a problem with the interface card. Luckily I have a spare machine that can donate a new working card!
And it works! Here’s a video of the HP 7585B #PenPlotter plotting a big arc Truchet tile design using three colors (yellow, cyan, and magenta) on 11x15 watercolor. Total time 1h15m.
Video montage of a HP 7585 #PenPlotter plotting a design of large concentric arcs broken up by squares in cyan, yellow, and magenta. It performs tool changes to swap pens automatically.
This Python script will convert an ImageWriter II data stream/capture into a TIFF file. This was incredibly handy for running multiple tests without needing to actually print it on the printer to see the results.
Noticing a lot of eBay descriptions clearly written by AI lately. Like a 4th grader trying to boost the word count of an essay with sum-zero phrases.
I’ve not sold on eBay in years so I’m curious to know if they’ve added an AI description service for sellers or are sellers getting them from an external service?
@paulrickards Funny, I was just noticing this today. It's terrible because some sellers seem to think they don't need to describe the condition of their items anymore. The generic "this Apple Power Macintosh G3 would make a great addition to any collection!" doesn't help me.
@dillera Heyya! A couple of days ago I tried printing to your ImageWriter over GlobaTalk. It seemed like it was working but it took a really long time so ended up stopping it. Did anything come up on that side?
@paulrickards I thought that printed from a Stylewriter for about 10 seconds. Never seen the single sheet feeder. Looks like it has stayed nice and platinum.
@dillera Yeah, it's pretty neat. It feeds paper correctly about 60% of the time. Makes boring videos since the paper emerges face down.
The ImageWriter is an early one (Apple II perhaps?) since there's no text next to the Apple logo. It's faded and yellowed so much! But it has the AppleTalk card in it 🙂
I’ve been rebuilding a #RaspberryPi installation that supports my classic Mac habit 😄
I used to use the awesome #MacIPGW image which includes a ton of pre-configured software like #netatalk. But it hasn’t been updated in a while so I used it as excuse to start from scratch.
I used this Pi Zero W as my starting point. HDMI video stopped working on it for unknown reasons. I added an Ethernet/USB hub hat and a #TashTalk 2 hat for #LocalTalk devices.
With netatalk, a TashTalk hat, TashRouter, and CUPS on the Raspberry Pi, we can do clever things like share a #ImageWriter II printer over #LocalTalk with an iPhone using AirPrint!
This screenshot was printed from my phone to the ImageWriter II.
Interestingly, this was just fixed in the latest netatalk 2.3.2!
Ok, so it’s just a big inkjet printer with all of the headaches of ink cartridges clogging and drying. It’s a monochrome printer so at least there’s just one cartridge. It prints on variable size from letter up to A1. Not sure new ink is still produced but there’s NOS available which I sourced.
Luckily the service manual is available and good. I adjusted the distance of the head to the platen and after a few more tries, it was nearly free of defects.
If it looks like a scantron form, that’s because it kinda is. This is how you change settings. Print a setup sheet, bubble in your selections with a pen or pencil, feed it back in, and press the “read settings” button. Kinda wild!
@paulrickards it does seem like with each version it progressively gets worse .. I was musing this same thought the other day when trying to just find a simple setting..
A pair of my favorite jeans developed a hole in the knee. This led to me to learning about #Sashiko, a beautiful art of visible mending. This inspired me to create this plotter design.
@paulrickards I had a similar introduction to Sashiko a while back, complete with plotter drawings coming from it. Still haven't actually mended my jeans though!
Starting to play around with a new #PenPlotter design idea. Many ideas start out as very simple bits of code that evolve with each iteration. I thought I'd share the progression that I've done so far so you can see how the work changes. None of these have been plotted yet, they're just previewed on the screen.
Another #VCFEast is in the books. This was my second time as an exhibitor showing my #PenPlotter art. It’s always so fun to see people be mesmerized by the plotter drawing intricate generative designs. For some, it’s the first time they’ve seen such a device.
Thanks to everyone who purchased my #PenPlotter artwork in the #VCFEast consignment area this year! I hope everyone enjoys their new art for many years.
Gathering things for my #PenPlotter exhibit for this weekends #VCFEast! I’ll have two big plotters running (and maybe a third if there’s space) as well as lots of plots, postcards, and 5.25” plotted floppies for sale in the consignment area.
Mother’s Day is coming up soon! Art makes a great gift!
The #PenPlotter was made for designs like this! I love recreating the original logo specifications. This is just an approximate as the original didn’t have dimensions but love the way it looks.
More logo specification plots. This time, the Aphex Twin logo by Paul Nicholson in 1991. After composing this, I realized the logo I had been using (found online ages ago) wasn’t exactly correct.