C.Itoh 8510 dotmatrix + Windows 8 = upside down text

[MacJunky]

I have an Apple Imagewriter I(based on C.Itoh 8510) and I have a 'thing' for dot matrix printers but never anything to print from old computers. Since I already have a Xerox Phaser 6280N I cannot justify the cost of a new modern impact unit since I do not really print all that much to be honest.
Enter the 15" Imagewriter! unk:
It has been sitting around for a while, got it with my IIc and would enjoy putting it to good use.

Where I am at now:
I have only Windows 8.1 on my main machines.
Sharing would require a server machine and client drivers unless... linux+CUPS but CUPS is garbage(tried already).

It DOES work properly with an Apple IIc and old Mac.

I CAN bang it using putty(and have the letters the right way up&around), manually typing all CR, LF, etc. This is labour intensive and not ideal.

I DO have the 64bit C.Itoh 8510 driver snagged from a server 2003 disc installed and printer added as was explained for someone else in this thread:
Apple LaserWriter v.23 printer & XP driver work in 32 bit Windows - Microsoft Community

I CAN print to it, but the text is upside down! :doh:

There are NO options for mirror/flip/rotate/whatever output. Only portrait and landscape.
I have tried selecting a different Print Processor with no change.
I have tried switching to printing directly to printer instead of spooling.
I do not know very much about printer drivers though, so am unsure how to proceed at this point.


Some extra info:
ImageWriter DIP Switch Settings (2/95)
ImageWriter I: Settings for All Apples (4/94)


Also, for paper sizes I only have options of US Letter, A4, and Euro fanfold... so that is annoying because I am using fanfold but it is not euro and loading single US letter sheets is a royal pita. So adding the correct size would be great since it keeps feeding looking for the end of the sheet if you select US letter.




Anyway..
TLR
My printer is printing text upside down! How do I fix it?


If anyone has ideas, I am all ears. Thanks.

 

[LaughingCrow]

I don't really have a concrete solution for you, just a few suggestions.

Can you find out if this is/was a Post Script printer driver?

What port are you using to output to the printer? i.e. serial, parallel? My thinking here is possibly a cabling/port issue that might be (easily?) corrected, as there were a lot of differences back in the 90s between Apple (Atari, Commodore, etc) and PC drivers and print drivers, among other things that caused compatibility issues between platforms. IIRC I had to modify a print driver for WordPerfect on the Atari for a dot matrix printer (probably Epson). Eventually Microsoft fixed most of this by standardizing print drivers, thankfully; before then it was problematic.

Another guess here, would be that a fix could involve reading the print header on the file and reversing a couple of digits in the header but that would require (creating) a software program to read and switch. Which I recall having to do for fonts between Apple and Atari but that was a long, long time ago. Data bits were stored in reverse order, so it had to be switched to make it compatible.

Also suggest that you search for custom print drivers and contact ITOH if they are still in business.

 

[Bond007]

No idea how to fix it, but you should definitely get it running like this:


<a href="<iframe width=" 640"="" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/otmase5twFM?feature=player_detailpage" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="">"><a href="<iframe width=" 640"="" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/otmase5twFM?feature=player_detailpage" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/otmase5twFM?feature=player_detailpage" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" width="640"></iframe>

 

[sswilson]

Wish I could help you, but wanted to chime in that I had one of these when they were first released... I shudder to think what I probably paid for it.

 

[MacJunky]

Can you find out if this is/was a Post Script printer driver?
What port are you using to output to the printer?

This printer is from 1984, it uses serial, I am lucky XP even /has/ any remotely related driver.
As far as I have seen Post Script is a no-go for this unit. :/
Here is a little extra reading if anyone cares:
ImageWriter - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
VAW: Computer Collection: ImageWriter

Another guess here, would be that a fix could involve reading the print header on the file and reversing a couple of digits in the header but that would require (creating) a software program to read and switch. Which I recall having to do for fonts between Apple and Atari but that was a long, long time ago. Data bits were stored in reverse order, so it had to be switched to make it compatible.

Being that x86 and x64 are both little-endian, I should not have that particular issue.
But yea, 6502 vs m68k certainly have that problem.

Also suggest that you search for custom print drivers and contact ITOH if they are still in business.

Heh I am not seeing those exist unless I took another shot at CUPS and tried to make that work properly.
I did just boot an old board and XP printed well enough so either the 64bit driver is broken, or MUCH more likely it is simply not compatible with new versions of windows.

Even in XP the only fanfold option is euro, so that is no good anyway.
I suspect I am just going to have to live without using this particular printer with modern computers since I am not one for writing drivers.

Need to find the noisiest one that will work with Win8.

Thanks for the suggestions anyway.

 

[LaughingCrow]

Longshot but... using 'itoh print drivers' in Google:

C.ITOH Windows Printer Drivers by Seagull Scientific

Windows 3.0 and 3.1 had print drivers and alternatives:

https://support.microsoft.com/kb/93202

 

[MacJunky]

The Seagull drivers are for completely different label/barcode printers, so what I tried did not work.
Testing alternatives is as follows:
(incl w/ win8) Generic IBM Graphics 9-pin: gibberish
(incl w/ win8) Generic/Text Only: more line feeds, but still gibberish

From server 2003 disk I thought I would try a couple Epson MX ones since "Epson MX" worked in AppleWorks II on the IIc.
Epson MX-100 and MX-80 both result in DD33DD33DD33DD etc being printed back and forth over the same line.
"IBM Graphics" and IBM Proprinter": random gibberish, no LF

 

[proxy]

About 10 years back we got an original IBM 'laser' printer manufactured circa 1982 to work by using generic Windows NT print drivers and modifying them slightly to recognize the IBM printer. The biggest issue was the tiny printer cache which really couldn't handle large prints. I wish I remember exactly what we did, but you might want to see if you can use any generic Windows NT print drivers for you printer?