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Hi guys, I just need some general info, and I'm hoping someone can point me in the right direction.
I have an old (like 6 years old) ink-jet printer, and I want to be able to control the page feed so it can print in both directions, instead of always feeding the pages in the same direction.
Is this even possible? If so, how? I'm not looking for a detailed solution, just general information on how I should go about doing this, i.e. do I need to make my own print driver or hack the the hardware or what?
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if what you need is the capability of both portrait and landscape printing, that is
provided by Windows itself. You can control it through the Page Setup or Printer Setup
dialog available in most apps.
Example: MS Word, Page Setup, Paper Size, Orientation
if you need to add landscape printing to your own app, it basically means tell the print
dialog that's what you want, Windows will do the rotation for you, the only thing you must
take care of is applying the page bounds that you get.
Luc Pattyn [Forum Guidelines] [My Articles]
this months tips:
- before you ask a question here, search CodeProject, then Google
- the quality and detail of your question reflects on the effectiveness of the help you are likely to get
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Thanks for the reply, but that's not what I meant
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Some old dot-matrix printers with tractor feed could move the paper in both directions. I don't believe that you can do the same with a sheet-feed printer, the paper would probably jam and ink would smear even if you could order the printer to reverse the paper direction.
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Thanks for the reply
Paperjams and smearing won't be an issue because I'm completely rebuilding the housing structure. I just need to know what approach I should take for reversing the paper direction, if it is possible.
Is it the print driver, commands sent to the printer, or do I have to hack the hardware itself?
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You will have to hack the hardware, and since its probably a simple DC motor that pulls the paper through (atleast on the old ones ive taken apart) then you should be able to reverse the polarity. If it has a stepper motor then im not sure if you can move the wires around to reverse it or not.
You will have to push the paper in backwards though...  and it will probably try to push out any paper lying in the paper tray too 
What are you going to do this for, it seems funny, a practical joke??
//Johannes
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I'm making a 3D printer, like a Zcorp printer. So, the first step is to turn my old printer into a flatbed printer, and ideally, I would like to be able to print in both feed directions, rather than zipping back to the start position each time, if you know what I mean.
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mike7373 wrote: Is it the print driver, commands sent to the printer, or do I have to hack the hardware itself?
All of above, and the firmware in the printer's embedded controller. Essentially you would be building a new printer that uses some of the components of the old one.
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I just read the whole thread
Why don't you plant the print-head on a flatbed-scanner chassis? Or a plotter?
If you want to print in 3D, you'll probably want to go with lowering the target instead of raising the "printer assembly", and a flatbed scanner usually does not have PCBs at the bottom (unlike an inkjet).
If you need to go with an inkjet printer alone, find one which also can print CDs and takes them from the front side. That way, you might get a printer which can a) reverse and b) might not jam when feeding backwards.
Cheers,
Sebastian
--
"If it was two men, the non-driver would have challenged the driver to simply crash through the gates. The macho image thing, you know." - Marc Clifton
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Addendum:
You'll really want to go with the scanner, though. You just dont want the target to move, trust me. 
Cheers,
Sebastian
--
"If it was two men, the non-driver would have challenged the driver to simply crash through the gates. The macho image thing, you know." - Marc Clifton
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Thanks, that's a great idea.
I had planned on lowering the target, as you suggested, but I never thought of using a scanner, and I just happen to have an old scanner lying around too 
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I am working on an application service that will be running on a PC with no monitor attached to it. Is there a way to force the hard drive activity light to blink (maybe like 1 second on, then 1 second off) so that we can tell whether or not the service is running without attaching a monitor? The normal disk activity that occurs while the service is running happens so fast that the light just flickers so dimly that it is hard to see if it is even on.
Thanks for any help, or pointers to resources that may be useful. The only things I could find from searching are people asking why their activity light constantly blinks.
--
Marcus Kwok
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I would not think that there is any way to directly control weather the HDD LED is on or off, but simply replacing a file with a large amount of data at certain intervals would work. Or if you are lucky your computers still have their PC speakers installed, meaning you could use Beep(int freq, int duration); (duration in ms)
Or maybe you could use inpout32(); to control the binary outputs on a LPT/printer port, and then connect a LED and resistor to make it blink... [^]
//Johannes
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Johannes,
Thanks for your reply.
Johpoke wrote: simply replacing a file with a large amount of data at certain intervals would work.
This probably would work, but my concern with this method is that it might contribute to the hard drive failing sooner than otherwise. In this application, the device is intended to be in service for many years with minimal user intervention. For the units that we are replacing with this new unit, the hard drives were the most common point of failure.
Johpoke wrote: you could use Beep(int freq, int duration);
This method might be a little too intrusive/annoying for the people working in the room.
Johpoke wrote: Or maybe you could use inpout32(); to control the binary outputs on a LPT/printer port, and then connect a LED and resistor to make it blink...
However, this idea is very interesting. Thanks for the pointer!
--
Marcus Kwok
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ricecake wrote: This method might be a little too intrusive/annoying for the people working in the room.
I was thinking the room might be like the server rooms ive been in. If that where the case you would have to put you ear to the case to hear the beeping. (or *overclock* the speaker )
Glad I could help 
//Johannes
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Well, it's kind of like a server room in that there will be a large amount of equipment in there, but I believe people will be working in there for a significant part of the time as well.
--
Marcus Kwok
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Well, the keyboard LEDs would work. You can control those with an interrupt, IIRC. Did that in TurboPascal once.
As for the HD-LED: difficult.
Cheers,
Sebastian
--
"If it was two men, the non-driver would have challenged the driver to simply crash through the gates. The macho image thing, you know." - Marc Clifton
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I don't think you can mess with them that way in a modern OS. My turboPascal keyboard light toggler crashed under NT4(3.5????). There's got to be an API way to do it though.
--
Join the Campaign to Help Stamp Out and Abolish Redundancy
The preceding is courtesy of the Bureau of Unnecessarily Redundant Repetition Department.
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Thanks for the suggestion; however, I forgot to mention in my original post that the keyboard and mouse will also be disconnected under normal use; they only get connected for maintenance.
--
Marcus Kwok
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(Disclaimer : I'm not a Hardware guy)
I want to do a small upgrade on my current HW configuration. The upgrade is mostly for playing games since I do not really use my desktop for anything else.
Current configuration :
Motherboard : Gigabyte GA-K8NF-9 ( supports PCI-ExpressX16 and Dual Channel DDR400 memory )
CPU : Athlon 64 x2 dual core 3800+
Memory : 2 gig (2x1gig) ( don't know the sort DDRwhatever )
Power supply : 450W.
Graphic Card : nVidia geForce 7600GT (256 meg ram)
Disk : 1 250 gig drive.
This configuration gives me a good "experience" with Hellgate:London, with most settings set to medium and with a 1280x1224 resolution, I want to be able to add a little punch to the performance and I think the big issue is with the graphic card.
I used http://www.srtest.com[^] and it tells me that I have 2 "issues" :
1- Memory : I should upgrade to 3 gig.
Dumb Question 1: I assume that if I want to add an additional 1 or 2 gigs I should match the memory specs.
Dumb Question 2: If I add only 1 gig, can I simply plug a 3rd bar in the slots or should I plug 2 512k bars? does "memory pair" that still have any meaning today ?
Dumb Question 3: Will that have a great impact on the whole system performance ?
2- Graphic Card : I should upgrade to a newer card.
Dumb Question 1: I always used an nVidia card, and probably continue using them, but is there a big difference between the Radeon and the GeForce when looking at higher level cards ?
Dumb Question 2: My current card is quite "small" in physical size compared to the newer packages (seems to be half in size), I assume that the newer cards still fit with a normal motherboard and cases ( Antec Sonata)?
Dumb Question 3: Do new card need additional "plug" and cabling ? are they still minimally plug'n'play ?
If I go for an nVidia, it looks like I have to have a 8800 series card, either 8800GTX, 8800GT or 8800GTS, Is there a real difference between those 3 cards ? the GTS seems the budget one with lower texture fill and bandwidth; if I want to have a long card life, me think I should go with the GTX, and that could survive a complete system rebuild in a year or so.
Generic Question 1: If I switch to a newer graphic card and the specs say that I need a 450W power supply, is that taking into account every other "things" plugged in ? the ATI Radeon 3800 says that I need a "75 Watt 6-pin PCI Express® power connector", is that another cable that comes out of the power supply ? is it well marked ? and/or standard in power supplies ?
Is there other things that I must really look into before committing money for new hardware ?
Is there a tool that can give me all/most hardware information without having me unplug and physically check the brand and names of every components ?
Thanks a lot..
Max.
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Memory:
You should try and match the speed an timing of the ram so that one set doesn't become a bottle neck compared to the the other. I'd always go for a pair of modules so that you can use "pairing".
An extra gig will probably help quite a bit if your running Vista, if your still on XP then I'm not so sure, 2 gig makes XP run very nicely
Graphics Card:
As per usual theres new stuff on the horizon, but right now I'd recommend the 8800GT for the best price/performance ratio, they are very fast cards and very cheap in comparison to the others.
finally if they recommend a psu wattage then they are guessing and what your probably machine spec will be and so how much you will need. The PCI Express power connector is a specific type of power supply connector.
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Maximilien wrote: Dumb Question 1: I assume that if I want to add an additional 1 or 2 gigs I should match the memory specs.
As long as you match the clock speeds it's only a very small effect and unlikely to be noticed outside of benchmarking.
Maximilien wrote: Dumb Question 2: If I add only 1 gig, can I simply plug a 3rd bar in the slots or should I plug 2 512k bars? does "memory pair" that still have any meaning today ?
All modern mobos are dual channel, so you need pairs.
Maximilien wrote: Dumb Question 3: Will that have a great impact on the whole system performance ?
are you using the swap file at present?
Maximilien wrote: Dumb Question 2: My current card is quite "small" in physical size compared to the newer packages (seems to be half in size), I assume that the newer cards still fit with a normal motherboard and cases ( Antec Sonata)?
Are you refering to length or width (1 slot vs 2). Assuming the latter the only issue is having the slot below empty (slot above if your case holds the mobo upside down).
Maximilien wrote: f I go for an nVidia, it looks like I have to have a 8800 series card, either 8800GTX, 8800GT or 8800GTS, Is there a real difference between those 3 cards ? the GTS seems the budget one with lower texture fill and bandwidth; if I want to have a long card life, me think I should go with the GTX, and that could survive a complete system rebuild in a year or so.
You want the 8800GT. The GTS is previous generation hardware (90nm v 65), even the 8800GTS-640 is slower than the GT, as well as using more power. The GTX/Ultra is 90nm hardware as well, and is only meaningfully faster at 2560x1600, and in a few rare cases 1920x1200. At lower resolutions the performance of the GT is identical to the GTX (give or take a few frame rates in either direction). The only problem is that demand is outstripping supply badly. They were released at a $200-250US price point and have since soared to almost $300.
Maximilien wrote: Generic Question 1: If I switch to a newer graphic card and the specs say that I need a 450W power supply, is that taking into account every other "things" plugged in ? the ATI Radeon 3800 says that I need a "75 Watt 6-pin PCI Express® power connector", is that another cable that comes out of the power supply ? is it well marked ? and/or standard in power supplies ?
It's a 6 pin cable in the same form factor as the ATX power cable, with 3 yellow and 3 black wires. Most, if not all, cards that need one come with a molex adapter. It has 2 4 pin molex plugs that can provide the power needed if they're connected to different strings of cables coming out of the PSU (putting them both on the same string will risk melting due to excess current draw). This is only a viable option if your PSU is reasonably new and has a strong 12V rail.
If you go with ATI, the 3870 is slightly slower than the 8800GT but probably not enough to matter at 1280x1024. The slightly lower speed means they're not being swamped and aren't having any supply problems as a result.
--
Help Stamp Out and Abolish Redundancy
The preceding is courtesy of the Department of Unnecessarily Redundant Repetition Department.
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Hello,
I want to clone a bootable hard drive to a number of other drives using C++/Windows(MFC)
As far as the hard drive is concerned, would I be able to just open the physical device (\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE0) and copy the original disk sector by sector onto the new drives? Or is there more to it than this?
Also, would it be possible to do this just by editing the volume (\\.\D: ) rather than physical disk??
Thank you.
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I'm trying to connect my IDE harddisk with my laptop through USB connector.. but it doesn't work.. My laptop is SONY VAIO and Windows Vista Home Premium installed on that machine. I'm using R-Driver III to connect my IDE Hard disk (3.5 HDD) through USB 2.0. it shows the indicator in system tray and I can remove the device safy.. but it doesn't show my harddisk in my explorer.. I have checked the Disk Manager from the Computer Management.. I didn't see my HD there too..
Any Idea??
Thanks in advance..
Thanks and Regards,
Michael Sync ( Blog: http://michaelsync.net)
"Please vote to let me (and others) know if this answer helped you or not. A 5 vote tells people that your question has been answered successfully and that I've pitched it at just the right level. Thanks."
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