[Coladam] Issues with Printer

[Ronald Mitchell]

Hmmmm.

As you know, the printer is also the power supply to the entire  
computer. I do know that the output voltages can change on the  
printer. Those of us who hooked up hard drive interface cards to the  
ADAM motherboard (the original BJ Lingrel installation) found that the  
output from some printers would be sufficient to drive the extra card,  
but would result in the video chip not getting quite enough juice, and  
hence, strange colours on the video screen. Switch printers, and all  
was well for a while. Some worked, some caused problems.

So it might well be that components have changed their electrical  
characteristics with age.  Again, just a wild guess, and I could be  
completely wrong. (Been known to happen).

By the way, the ADAM emulator site has available a version that can be  
compiled for the Linux Platform. I think that's what the original was  
first written for. It's up there on Marcel deKogel's site. One of my  
ongoing challenges one of these days is to do what Dale Wick and Geoff  
Oltmans and others  have already done and compile a version of ADAMEM  
to run on my Linux box here. I just want to see if I can do it.  That  
would eliminate the house of cards you described with one emulator  
running atop another.

Ron





On 5-Jan-10, at 10:43 PM, Craig Lindholm wrote:

> Hi Ron
>
> I looked at the emulator a few years back, but, as you said, it's  
> not that same thing ( Plus, I use a Linux machine, so I would need  
> to run the emulator inside Windows which is also running in a  
> virtual machine on Linux....Ugh. I'm getting a headache :-) ).
>
> I looked at the switch, and it seams to be working fine. I toggled  
> with my finger, and the print head immediately stopped, the daisy  
> wheel spun, then the print moved to the right about an inch. No  
> carriage return though, and no printing. This weekend, I will open  
> it up further and take a look at the switch, the platen motor, and  
> the print solenoid.
>
> Craig
>
> On 01/05/2010 09:40 PM, Ronald Mitchell wrote: