Printing data

[Mark Episcopo]

Two things: I can write mbasic generated data to the HD, thinking I could take the SD card out and look at it on my PC.  But I don't see any of the files I generated.  Where are they?

And, If I bought a centronics printer from e-bay, can it be hooked up?  Or is there another way to print programs and data files?

Thanks

[Tom Wilson]

The Altair-Duino uses disk images for the emulated disk drives. This means you need to extract the data from the images.

If you search the archives on this list, one of our members has created an Altair disk tool, which can help with that.

The other way to get files out of your AD and onto  your PC is to map one of the serial ports to the USB Programming port. You can then connect your PC to the AD using PuTTY or another serial terminal program and capture output from the serial port.

[John Galt]

files generated in MBASIC would be saved inside the DISK Image as a file which is on the SD inside the disk image you mounted.

1) you could pull files from the DISK Image using CPMTOOLS. so you would transfer the SD to your PC then use CPMTOOLS to open the disk image and pull out the file you want.

2) you could transfer the files using XMODEM(pcput/pcget) to and from your modern PC using terminal software. this requires either a wifi or serial connection and i find it much faster and easier since you 

do not have to keep removing the micro SD from the altair-duino.

Yes, you can hook up a serial printer or a parallel printer with a serial converter. 

Directly using a parallel printer is more difficult and would require programming a driver and using the I/O BUS parallel card.

I use a few different OKIDATA printers with my setup.

[Tom Lake]

There's a Centronics card that can use a parallel printer directly.

Centronics Card

[markepi...@gmail.com]

Hey Tom,

I'll have the card soon.  Will an Okidata Microline 182 (Centronics interface) work? There are a bunch on ebay.  Seems like it should.   Don't want to jump without knowing.

Thanks

Mark

[Tom Lake]

The 182 works fine. You might have to put a jumper on the Centronics card (See red oval on picture) though.

[markepi...@gmail.com]

Thanks Tom