💾 Archived View for gem.kirigiri.me › gemlog › 2023-12-10.gmi captured on 2024-07-08 at 23:30:58. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2023-12-28)
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Honestly at this point some people are probably thinking I just like to collect old junk. And to an extent... yeah, I do. But this is interesting junk that intrigues me. So... yeah, I have to have it. And I got both of these at really decent prices in my opinion, compared to some of the ones floating around.
It's a calculator. Well, in some ways. This is a model that seems to be everywhere on eBay, but is non-existent on Casio's website(s) and I can't find any manual. I only found one UK listing for it with its manual included.
It's a much bigger calculator than you may expect - not so many buttons, but they are gigantic to go along with the oversized look of it in general. Its LCD is obviously made well, and the seven segment pieces light up a somewhat teal-ish green - a pleasing look behind the plastic guard that is tinted black. It can display 12 characters at once and can probably do a lot more than I know it can. Inside it is definitely an older style design, and actually has an internal power supply! In my case it is only 230V AC, so this wouldn't work at all in 100-120V countries.
Its printer takes 57mm thermal paper, but weirdly enough is NOT a thermal printer! It's ink-based. This particular one takes the IR-40T ink roller, but not a ribbon like the later models (e.g. DR-620TEC) which take the RB-02 ink ribbon.
At first I thought it was broken. When I was trying to subtract numbers, it refused to do it and instead added them on. It wasn't acting like any calculator I'd ever used, which really threw me for a loop. Remember here that the extent of my calculator experience was daily usage of a Casio fx-83GT PLUS (later a fx-83GTX) scientific calculator, and very simple poking about of a Texas Instruments TI-83 Plus.
I'd eventually found a YouTube video about a Sharp model that prints, and the person in the video labelled it an 'adding machine' - NOT a calculator. The sequence of button presses were different for subtraction. So, I tried that method and... yep, it worked. So this is emulating an adding machine in a way instead of behaving like a regular calculator. Neat.
In all other ways it behaves like a calculator should, but with a few extra things bolted on - like that printer, and a few switches to control what to do with decimal points that I feel like I shouldn't touch because I am crap at maths and don't want to make it any more complicated for myself. I do know that the switch to the left controls power, whether to print and whether to switch to Euro conversion mode (and activate the printer in that mode too), while the very right switch controls how many decimal places to add. I set that to zero. The middle... I don't know what it does. Reading the manual for the DR-620TEC told me it's something to do with decimals again.
The printer is the star of the show and it's (to me) a beauty. As I said before, it's actually ink-based despite accepting commodity 57mm width thermal paper. It seems Casio were very late to the thermal printing party for these, since the DR-620TEC also uses a very similar ink mechanism, just with a ribbon instead. It's no inkjet, since it relies on that ink roller for its supply - it's actually an impact printer, like a typical dot matrix you'd connect to a PC or Mac back in the late 1980s or in the early 1990s. However, instead of the dot matrix mechanism it just has three wheels that rotate to select the desired characters and then impacts the paper. Very neat, and presumably much simpler than a thermal printer.
The fact it's impact instead of thermal means it is a pretty noisy (but satisfying) one, guaranteed to irritate anyone nearby. It does work very well though, and reliably prints the numbers and symbols onto the paper as it feeds it through line by line. If you're wondering if there's any sort of smarts to this printer, there isn't - all you've got is the feed button, which only advances the paper a line at a time.
It's a really nice, rather large calculator. It would definitely be more at home on an accountant's desk than mine, but for £10 it's a steal. It did barely survive the trip though as the box was obliterated and there was next to no packaging material inside. If you like calculators, maybe consider one of these models.
Yes. I, like vwestlife on YouTube (and Fedi at this point) have always been a bit intrigued by point-of-sale (POS) equipment, though I think receipt printers have been what I've been interested in the most out of the lot. I refused to pay much for one and high prices for a lot of them really did put me off, since I wasn't about to spend £45 on one that didn't include a bloody power supply.
Two things - it was cheap, and I'd noticed that it had an *internal* power supply. This was not something I'd previously seen, as most of the printers I'd found on eBay beforehand were Epson branded - meaning that they all had external PSUs, and 99% of them didn't come with one, despite selling for £40 and up usually. This one instead had an IEC C13 input connector on the back. It was very reasonably priced at £20 as well, so I snapped one up. It came from a tech refurbishment and recycling seller and they had 'more than 10' available - they'd probably picked up a bunch from UK supermarket chain like Sainsbury's or a value shop like Poundstretcher or Poundland and wanted to sell them on.
Okay, there was a third reason - I was working under the assumption that this was a TSP100ECO, which would have supported Epson's ESC/POS language. I'd find out later that this was in fact *not* an ECO model.
It arrived in a massive box, 90% of the volume was bubble wrap and cardboard. When I'd unwrapped it from its tomb, I took a quick look at it while I plugged it in to test and then wiped it down with a baby wipe.
With this particular unit coming in black, it would blend in pretty well with a lot of newer POS equipment, and it actually doesn't show off, well... anything! There's no branding anywhere on the shell, and the only way you'd know it was made by Star without plugging it into a computer is by looking at the underside. The only words on the shell are to denote the power and error LEDs alongside the paper feed button. The later TSP100III would have Star's branding plastered on the front.
It's got some battle scars too. Not surprising as it most likely was in a retail environment for it entire life, though it could have served in a warehouse printing self adhesive labels or something. It has some white scuff marks on the left side but not much else, and is in surprisingly decent condition.
On the front is the power and error LEDs alongside the paper feed button. Holding that button while turning it on will start a self test. On the left side is the hard power switch. On the right is nothing, and on the back is a cover that is made to hide the cables.
It has a standard IEC C13 input for power, a USB type B connector and an RJ11 jack for a cash drawer. The standard power connector and USB connection meant it'd be almost dead simple to get working with a modern computer. A lot of printers I saw are serial or parallel, built to work with older equipment that retail stores refused to retire.
When I plugged it in I immediately set to work getting Mike42's ESCPOS PHP driver to work. Unfortunately, no matter what I tried (sending directly to /dev/usb/lp0, using CUPS to send raw data to it) it refused to respond and print anything. I was disappointed, as I was still under the assumption this was a TSP100ECO which spoke ESC/POS - even the lsusb output suggested it was such, but also identified it as a TSP100II model.
At this point a little desperate to get it working (I really didn't want to send it back in that giant box, imagine the shipping costs) I looked to Star themselves for a driver. Shockingly, they not only had the full Windows 'FuturePRNT' suite, but they actually had a Mac and Linux CUPS driver available. With no login required. For free.
Okay, fuck ESCPOS, let's try that instead! And oh my god it worked, FINALLY. It seems I lucked out too as the thermal print head appeared to be pretty clean - the text came out super clear and with few pixels missing. Everything will come out cut off for now since it's expecting 83mm paper and I only have 57mm for that Casio calculator right now, I'm still waiting on the roll I ordered to even be shipped.
So, yeah, this isn't a TSP100ECO at all. When using the Windows FuturePRNT suite (found on the TSP100III page), it identifies it as a 'TSP100 Cutter (TSP143)' - so this is older than I thought it was. I can't find a manufacture date but it must be at least from the mid-2000s.
That I'm not sure of. I did see a video on YouTube where you can use Streamerbot and some extra code to make it print out Twitch events (e.g. follows, subscriptions, donations) - but that's a little bit niche since not everyone streams.
I suppose you could print to-do lists and such on here - it would certainly be a bit better for that since it doesn't use ink, just paper. That's up to you though.
I just think it's neat, really. I'll keep it around for any small things I need to print that don't require an A4 sheet of paper and an inkjet, because although I do have a large amount of ink for my Epson EcoTank it still costs money, and I do like to save that.
If you're curious about this stuff too, can afford it and find one for cheap... why not pick one up? They can be found on eBay, thrift stores, etcetera. Don't pay too much for one. The original manufacturers charge enough at £200+ a pop these days.
I just wanted to talk about this stuff really. It's old equipment that's not wanted by the companies or individuals that sold them on, and I was happy to take them.