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by LarryMade2 1540 days ago
Old OS Printer Drivers - I can deal with a lot of old programs, just run them on old computers, but being able to print when classic printers are either in short supply or hard to maintain is an issue. So I would advocate for having modern printers with some open or legacy OS driver support.

Alternative would be having some printer server/emulator which interfaces and emulates as popular legacy printer(s) and serves it out appropriately to modern devices.

1 comments

If it's important enough, you might be able to get them working from network through a raspi and CUPS.
Looks like there are some people working on it - https://www.retroprinter.com/ This one is a raspberry pi one so far emulates text, ESCP, ESC/P2, PCL, PostScript, has a Centronics connector - which is a start (Mac serial would be nice)

Also see print capture devices which can intercept/log printer output (for data conversion/preservation) http://www.photologic.ca/cap.html

Going to have to look into this more :-D