Not unlike the last time I wrote about anything printing-related, it's
been a while. Most of my attention has been spent on meatspace tasks
(like finishing the tick farmhouse!) but it's now time for a status dump.
The main news is full support for the Mitsubishi CP-W5000, including
both sets of cutters and duplexing support. This printer was
Mitsubishi's swan song before their exit from the printer business, and
brings aobut the end of an era.
Also gaining proper support is the old Fujifilm ASK-2500 aka the Nidec
Copal DPB-7000. It turns out it uses the same command language as the
older Sony models, so there's clearly some shared ancestry. The
ASK-2000 (DPB-6000) and ASK-4000 (DPB-4000) will benefit from this, and
should JustWork(tm) once I get the USB VID/PIDs for them.
The minilab-focused DNP DS480 and DS680 models were added as variants of
the Mitsubishi CP-D70 family. I've never seen one for sale on its own,
but one can still find media on eBay.
All of these additions were done without physical access, relying on
interested third parties to provide sniffs and testing, so I don't have
any first-print photos to show for any of these.
Preliminary support for the HiTi P310 and P320 series also landed, but
in true HiTi fashion they're different enough from everything else that
more development is needed before printing is expected to work. This
was done in anticipation of someone sending me these printers, but they
ghosted me.
Also added is preliminary support for the Fujifilm ASK-400, a rebadged
version of the Citizen CX-02 (and DNP DS620). Once I get the requisite
USB IDs it should JustWork(tm).
For existing printers, the HiTi P520/P525 and P461 saw notable
improvements, and the older Canon SELPHY CP models landed a fix for a
serious regression that prevented printing on most media types. Bringing
up the rear is the ability to update the firmware of most DNP and
Citizen models (and their various rebadged variants).
Looking to the future, there's still quite a long todo list on my issue
tracker, but most of
those tasks are on hold as I simply lack access to the the printer hardware
or are basically an exercise in hardcore binary reverse engineering.
Along those lines, if someone from inside HiTi or Kodak Alaris could get
in touch with me with documentation that would help out a great deal,
but barring that, the best way to help is to send a printer my way,
preferably with some money tucked into the box.
Happy Printing, folks!