This is a wonderful way to keep older devices working indefinitely. The idea that a printer could in any way be obsolete is ridiculous on its face: can it print something that humans can read and otherwise use? Of course it can.
The same is true of audio gear. Avid / Digidesign and Microsoft would have us believe that audio gear somehow becomes obsolete, and there are lots of fanbois who don't understand driver programming who say that Progress Will Be Held Up if people have to spend countless hours, days, weeks or months maintaining drivers for older devices. It's absolute horse hockey. If Apple can sell audio files with DRM that still work twenty years later, and if twenty year old iPods can work with modern computers today, I think Microsoft could, too, if they wanted, although they won't because it financially benefits them to not support things they've sold you in the past.
Personally, I started using an ImageWriter II dot matrix printer when a new Epson printer (less than six months old) refused to work because it hadn't been used in a month. If I need something fancier than an ImageWriter, I'll find an old printer like this, something that'll work even if one of the colors is out, and run CUPS to talk to it.
> The idea that a printer could in any way be obsolete is ridiculous on its face…
Acquiring the correct ink either in a cartridge or as an injection would probably be the tricky part.
Edit:
I just wrote some userland code to get a usb device working. It was much more pleasant than I anticipated. I don’t think wiring or code will ever be the long pole with this type of thing.
The same is true of audio gear. Avid / Digidesign and Microsoft would have us believe that audio gear somehow becomes obsolete, and there are lots of fanbois who don't understand driver programming who say that Progress Will Be Held Up if people have to spend countless hours, days, weeks or months maintaining drivers for older devices. It's absolute horse hockey. If Apple can sell audio files with DRM that still work twenty years later, and if twenty year old iPods can work with modern computers today, I think Microsoft could, too, if they wanted, although they won't because it financially benefits them to not support things they've sold you in the past.
Personally, I started using an ImageWriter II dot matrix printer when a new Epson printer (less than six months old) refused to work because it hadn't been used in a month. If I need something fancier than an ImageWriter, I'll find an old printer like this, something that'll work even if one of the colors is out, and run CUPS to talk to it.