How were Amiga Printer drivers written?

[Jeff_Birt]

I'm curious how Amiga printer drivers were written. Specifically for parallel printers that use something similar to an Epson command set.

For example I recently acquired a Panasonic KXP2124 with a color kit. Of course the control codes to change colors are something that are not an Epson standard (though I may have found a suitable driver on aminet.)

I'm just curious if parallel port printers drivers were simply control character mapping or were more involved. I can't seem to locate any technical details, probably from not knowing where to look.

Thanks for any pointers.

[saimon69]

I wonder if giving a look at GIMP-Print can give any clue; is for BSD and Linux but i expect it to have several parallel drivers there...

[Jeff_Birt]

Thanks but I'm asking about Amiga specific driver implementation not application usage of a driver for printing.

[deimos]

Originally Posted by Jeff_Birt

I'm curious how Amiga printer drivers were written. Specifically for parallel printers that use something similar to an Epson command set.

For example I recently acquired a Panasonic KXP2124 with a color kit. Of course the control codes to change colors are something that are not an Epson standard (though I may have found a suitable driver on aminet.)

I'm just curious if parallel port printers drivers were simply control character mapping or were more involved. I can't seem to locate any technical details, probably from not knowing where to look.

Thanks for any pointers.

There's a book somewhere, "Inside Amiga Printer Drivers", or something. There was also a tool to reverse engineer printer drivers. It was definitely more than just control character mapping, I had a 9 pin epson compatible that would do 3 passes to get near letter quality printing. Print speeds in minutes per page rather than pages per minute.

[davideo]

Bombjack has Amiga Printers Inside & Out by Abacus.

Have you had a look at that book?

[Jeff_Birt]

Thanks, I had not come across "Amiga printers Inside & Out" yet. I did find mention of "Mastering Amiga Printers" but could not find a PDF or hardcopy anywhere. I did see one listing from last year and contacted the OP to see if it was still available though.

I'll read through the "Amiga Printers Inside & Out" and see if that answers my questions.

[Minuous]

There's detailed information and examples in the ROM Kernel Manual: Devices.

[fryguy]

Printers Inside and Out can be found here:

https://archive.org/stream/Amiga_Pri...ef=ol#mode/2up

[Thomas Richter]

Originally Posted by Jeff_Birt

I'm curious how Amiga printer drivers were written. Specifically for parallel printers that use something similar to an Epson command set.

You find the complete source code of the epson printer driver in the RKRM "Devices". Since the RKRMs are online, it should not be a problem finding them. Probably here: http://aminet.net/dev/src/RKRM_Devs_prgs.lha

Originally Posted by Jeff_Birt

I'm just curious if parallel port printers drivers were simply control character mapping or were more involved. I can't seem to locate any technical details, probably from not knowing where to look.

They are more involved. CSI-sequence substitution is a minor part, the major part is the graphics printing facility.

[Jeff_Birt]

Originally Posted by Minuous

There's detailed information and examples in the ROM Kernel Manual: Devices.

Thanks, I had not heard of that one before either and was able to find a PDF of it.

[Jeff_Birt]

Originally Posted by Thomas Richter

You find the complete source code of the epson printer driver in the RKRM "Devices". Since the RKRMs are online, it should not be a problem finding them. Probably here: http://aminet.net/dev/src/RKRM_Devs_prgs.lha They are more involved. CSI-sequence substitution is a minor part, the major part is the graphics printing facility.

Thanks!

[rzookol]

Also check printer.device sources in Aros git repo.