going to need some quickly repeatable printing ops

[kenp]

I've a lot of floppies to catalog.  I see the FujiNet has a printer emulation and was looking into that.

All I'd like is to be able to send a directory list to a printer from some DOS.  (some of my disks are in SpartaDOS.)  The idea that the FujiNet stores the printed output as a .PDF file works just fine for me.

I tired it once, printing a disk directory list from MyDOS to P: and it seemed to work.  Followup prints weren't so successful, only containing a couple of the file names that should have been in the list.  And the print attempt ends with an Error 138 but I'm not sure if that refers to the disk or the P: device.  Likely the P: device since listing the files to the screen just completes without any error message.

 

I tried restting the FujiNet only and powering the whole setup, Atari 130XE, FujiNet and disk drives but still only get a couple of file names where there should be 11.

 

I might ask what happens to the .PDF file if it isn't downloaded before the next print request comes along.  For example, I print a list of files from a floppy, switch out the floppy for the next one and print the file list from that next floppy, and so on.  Does the FujiNet create a new .PDF for each print that happens, might the new print request overwrite the old one replacing it or does the FujiNet append the new print onto the old .PDF file?  (Actually, that last one might be a good thing for my task.

Edited February 6, 2023 by kenp
added a detail.

[tschak909]

10 hours ago, kenp said:

I've a lot of floppies to catalog.  I see the FujiNet has a printer emulation and was looking into that.

All I'd like is to be able to send a directory list to a printer from some DOS.  (some of my disks are in SpartaDOS.)  The idea that the FujiNet stores the printed output as a .PDF file works just fine for me.

I tired it once, printing a disk directory list from MyDOS to P: and it seemed to work.  Followup prints weren't so successful, only containing a couple of the file names that should have been in the list.  And the print attempt ends with an Error 138 but I'm not sure if that refers to the disk or the P: device.  Likely the P: device since listing the files to the screen just completes without any error message.

 

I tried restting the FujiNet only and powering the whole setup, Atari 130XE, FujiNet and disk drives but still only get a couple of file names where there should be 11.

 

I might ask what happens to the .PDF file if it isn't downloaded before the next print request comes along.  For example, I print a list of files from a floppy, switch out the floppy for the next one and print the file list from that next floppy, and so on.  Does the FujiNet create a new .PDF for each print that happens, might the new print request overwrite the old one replacing it or does the FujiNet append the new print onto the old .PDF file?  (Actually, that last one might be a good thing for my task.

The "Paper" is appended to, until it is torn off by "retrieving" it from the web admin.

[kenp]

27 minutes ago, tschak909 said:

The "Paper" is appended to, until it is torn off by "retrieving" it from the web admin.

Very good.  And I like the analogy.  Makes it exceptionally clear.

 

Now I just have to figure out what the Error 138s are all about. 

[_The Doctor__]

138 often means it's not there or there is a device timing out.

maybe check the sio pins solder joints inside the fujinet and relflow any suspect ones, reflash it with the latest firmware again, and then while still connected via usb get the log file of what's going on while booting and doing your thing.

 

The printer code was recently changed. I noticed a few rumblings about this or that since the last round of updates, perhaps timing is slightly different now and causing edge cases to appear. Timing is everything so to speak. Could be something causes a memory leak but I'd think that would hit the same things for people in progression. Normally it's just one thing that becomes a problem after an update and fixed relatively quickly. Could be coincidence but we have a variance this time around. It's hard to tell because if it is that kind of issue people just change things to try and get around it, different server, different AP, router etc. Could just be bad flashes etc. don't know what would make that random or more marginal, that's part of why my thought was all things being equal it can't hurt to flash again.

Edited February 6, 2023 by _The Doctor__

[_The Doctor__]

I'd track down the others, but I'll leave that to the powers that be.

[chad5200]

7 hours ago, tschak909 said:

The "Paper" is appended to, until it is torn off by "retrieving" it from the web admin.

Would love to have the option to look at the printer output but not have it torn off automatically. Then have a button to manually tear it off when wanting to clear it out.

 

 

[kenp]

26 minutes ago, chad5200 said:

Would love to have the option to look at the printer output but not have it torn off automatically. Then have a button to manually tear it off when wanting to clear it out.

 

 

That might be an option to tell the developers about.

[kenp]

7 hours ago, _The Doctor__ said:

138 often means it's not there or there is a device timing out.

maybe check the sio pins solder joints inside the fujinet and relflow any suspect ones, reflash it with the latest firmware again, and then while still connected via usb get the log file of what's going on while booting and doing your thing.

 

The printer code was recently changed. I noticed a few rumblings about this or that since the last round of updates, perhaps timing is slightly different now and causing edge cases to appear. Timing is everything so to speak. Could be something causes a memory leak but I'd think that would hit the same things for people in progression. Normally it's just one thing that becomes a problem after an update and fixed relatively quickly. Could be coincidence but we have a variance this time around. It's hard to tell because if it is that kind of issue people just change things to try and get around it, different server, different AP, router etc. Could just be bad flashes etc. don't know what would make that random or more marginal, that's part of why my thought was all things being equal it can't hurt to flash again.

Figured it out.  It's likely the ATR8000 getting in the way of the printing function on the FujiNet.  I need the ATR8000 to handle the disk drive but haven't a printer attached.  Certainly not going to make a special case out of handling an ATR8000 interface.  There wouldn't be enough of them around, I'm sure.  AND gonna be even fewer as these FujiNets become more common as well.  Might be a challenge figuring out why to keep the ATR8000 around after everything is running on the FujiNet.

 

Anyway, I changed the FujiNet to respond as P3: and got three disk directories in one .PDF file just as described by sending the prints to P3:.  All good.  Many thanks to all for the help as I get back in the saddle here. 

 

I have to say again, if I haven't already, that I'm blown away by the current interest in these old machines.  I was fully expecting that I'd need to find my way into the Raspberry Pi or Arduino world to make something like the FujiNet from scratch just to store the contents of my old floppy disks to SD cards or something but here it is along with a whole bunch of other features in the FujiNet and even more devices, connectors and software already in place.  Absolutely fantastic.

Next thing you know, after I get about half way through copying disks to the FujiNet I'll find some software that will run on a MS-DOS machine with a 360K drive and read the Atari floppies into .atr files directly.  (Maybe I should look before I go too much farther.  🙂 Cripes, that would be sweet, too.)

 

(btw, your steps to check to make sure everything was working reminded me of an old little video about switching to Linux  The relevant bit is about a minute in.  

 

Whoah, Look at that, I paste in a link and it grabs a frame from the video.  It' becoming too much for my old brain to keep up with.  🙂 )

Edited February 6, 2023 by kenp

[_The Doctor__]

I didn't see the ATR 8000 mentioned in this thread, nor any other printer/printing device. Makes it a little hard to figure out, and maybe should have asked.

 

So the answer is you had two printing devices on the the same ID and they were getting in the way of each other, the device timed out because they were both talking over each other at the same time.

 

Solution being to pick a different ID or to turn one off. Since the ATR8000 printer port/spool was still on. You chose another ID and it's all good.

 

[kenp]

On 2/6/2023 at 3:09 PM, _The Doctor__ said:

I didn't see the ATR 8000 mentioned in this thread, nor any other printer/printing device. Makes it a little hard to figure out, and maybe should have asked.

 

So the answer is you had two printing devices on the the same ID and they were getting in the way of each other, the device timed out because they were both talking over each other at the same time.

 

Solution being to pick a different ID or to turn one off. Since the ATR8000 printer port/spool was still on. You chose another ID and it's all good.

 

Seems to be the fix.  Sometimes I just need to type things out to get the brain gears turning again.  I've lost my local friends that would help me talk things through, some moved away, some moved on to other things, some just died.

 

Why should you have asked about an ATR8000?  Yes, it was mentioned in another thread but I'm the one that should be remembering all these details.  Sorry, but the ATR8000 is, at the moment, a thing in the background; a big dark thing.  I've forgotten so much about it.  I used to have a printer attached to it and an old RS232 acoustical coupled modem.  But now it just sits in the background running the floppy drives, since I haven't an 810 or 1050, and getting in the way of other stuff the FujiNet is trying to do.  I'm just glad at this point that the FujiNet has the option of changing the printer number.  It shows how much more competent the new device is.  At the moment I've switched over to using the FujiNet as my boot disk and using the ATR800 just for 5.25" drive 2 and a drive 3 if/when I get one of the 8" drives working.  It doesn't even look like it would be needed for a CP/M machine as the Fujinet seems to have that capacity as well now.

 

But, I'm getting down to having most of the bugs worked out of a minimum system to start converting floppies over to solid state storage and a time will come when I'll have to face a decision about keeping the ATR8000 or not, and the 5.25" and 8" drives and all the actual floppy disks.  Maybe I'll keep it and down size to just two 5.25" drives, a 360K and a 1.2M because you cannot dependably write 90K to 360K disk on a 1.2M drive.  But them big noisy old 8" drives will have to go once the floppies get transferred or abandoned.  At same time I'm now realizing that the task may not be a large as I thought.  Much of the old library was of programs and magazine disks that will have already been shifted and available in other places.