Printing from Basilisk II running on Macbook

[anxiousjedi]

Hello,

I am a student filmmaker exploring this realm for the purpose of using the emulator and an Apple ImageWriter II in a student film.

I am working on a Macbook Pro running Tahoe 26. I have successfully installed Basilisk II running OS 7.5.3. I have also successfully installed Microsoft Word 6 onto the emulator system.

The issue is, expectedly, finding a way to connect with/print to the ImageWriter II from the emulator environment. I purchased adapters from USB to RS232 serial to the mini din 8 pin, installed the serial adapter driver, used the terminal to find the serial location and entered that into the Basilisk GUI ports. Still nothing. Any time I attempt to print Basilisk II freezes and requires a force quit.

I have found a wide variety of of differing instructions on how to make this work, as well as information stating that it won't work. I did find thishttps://www.emaculation.com/doku.php/im ... e_printing though it is Windows specific so I didn't want to attempt to go down that road if it would ultimately be a bust.

In short, if anyone here has beginner friendly advice on how to connect the ImageWriter to the emulator environment it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance for any help you guys can provide!

[Ronald P. Regensburg]

As far as I am aware, there is ino way to directly connect the printer (any printer) to the emulated machine on a macOS host. And you will probably not be able to print to the ImageWriter II printer.

These printing instructions are for SheepShaver and BasiliskII on OSX/macOS hosts: https://www.emaculation.com/doku.php/sh ... k_printing

This guide is last updated in 2015 and some things have changed since. Specifically, Preview in later macOS versions does not open PostScript files anymore.

Skim can open both PDF and PS files on the macOS side. Skim is free: https://skim-app.sourceforge.io

[anxiousjedi]

Thanks so much for this information, Ronald! Greatly appreciated.

[emendelson]

Can you use any of the available software solutions that supposedly let you print from macOS to the ImageWriter II? If you can make the ImageWriter the default printer in macOS (or simply add it to the installed printers), then you can print to it from the self-contained 7.5.5 system found here:

https://mendelson.org/macos9osx.html

Scroll down until you find it.

[Ronald P. Regensburg]

Your suggestion can only work if it is possible to print from a MacBook Pro with macOS Tahoe to an ImageWriter II printer. I doubt this is possible. The ImageWriter II is a serial based dot matrix printer introduced in 1985.

[emendelson]

Yes - there's no direct way to print to the ImageWriter II, but a web search showed that people had managed it with a set of hardware and software tools, so it seems that it is possible, or was possible a few years ago. I didn't look in detail, but there is a lot of material out there in the web. The original poster seems to have looked into it.

[anxiousjedi]

Yes there are some really intriguing instructions with a Raspberry Pi but that’s pretty far outside of my wheelhouse. Currently going the less exciting route of tracking down a friend of a friend who supposedly has a functioning vintage Macintosh that is ImageWriter compatible.

But I have to say finding this forum and playing with Basilisk has been a joy! Has me contemplating what fun things I can find to do with it now that I have it on my system.