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Printer for Osborne I

M

MrAndy282

New Member
Joined
Feb 1, 2014
Messages
4
Location
Graz, Austria
Hello,

I bought a perfectly working Osborne1 a few months ago, now I´m thinking about getting a printer for it.

Does anyone know what types of printers fit (or don´t) and what type of printer cable i need ?

thank you for your help,
Andreas
 
Last edited:
hi
Do some research about the cable. The info in the reference guide is wrong. When I went to have one made, he guy told me it would not work. And he was right. I remember using Epson printers with parallel ports. They can use serial port printers.
Look in Wordstar to see what printers it supports.
Will see if I can find the cable info for you.
 
I could not find the web page with the info. Maybe someone with the printer cable
can check theirs.
 
acollins22 said:
Hello Andreas,

You can find a section of the technical manual here... http://www.kev.pulo.com.au/osborne1/documents/o1techman.pdf and on pages 17 and 18 it describes the serial port pins outs and suggests a cable.

Hope this helps,

Cheers,

Andy.
Click to expand...

The problem is that the suggested cable in that manual is not 100% correct according to many online sources. I have a working cable (that I tested last night) and I will be able to post the pinouts once I can get back to my notes. Also note that even with a good cable, by default the IEEE-488 port is not setup to "emulate" the Centronics signals by default, you must activate this using config the "setup" program.

Rick
 
Never heard of any problems with the serial port printers. Never seen a serial port printer. The Centronics/Parallel were much easier to buy.
 
Here is the pinning of my cable that I have been using for 32 years:

O1 Printer
1-----data0-------2
2-----data4-------6
3-----data1-------3
4-----data5-------7
5-----data2-------4
6-----data6-------8
7-----data3-------5
8-----data7-------9
11---strobe-------1
15----busy-------11
12----gnd--------17
14----gnd--------19
16----gnd--------21

HTH,
Rick
 
Again, any ASCII serial printer should work fine also. BTW, back in the day, serial interface printers where quite common. Many very popular printers were only available with serial interfaces such as the Apple ImageWriter and the original HP LaserJet (and I am pretty sure the Diablo 630 was serial too). Most others had a serial interface option available.

Rick
 
Yea, I guess the Diablo 630 was a bad example, as they even offered a PET IEEE-488 version that may have directly interfaced with the Osborne's funky IEEE-488 port. Let me rephrase my post, "all the Diablo's (50 or more) I ever had installed were RS232 serial".
Rick
 
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