Pinout for printer?

[kattz]

I have obtained the airborne printer for my sim.  P/N 706300-546 by Miltope.  I contacted the mfgr and some reps but no joy.  This is originally for a 747-400 or 767-300.  If someone can provide an electrical diagram or pinout I would greatly appreciate it.

You can see the printer at  https://aerospace.astronovainc.com/products/airborne-printers/miltope-series/tp4840/

Thanks.

Kev

[ame]

Looks like a thermal line printer with a 41 pin connector.

If you can't find anything about the printer then try the other end. What talks to it? How is it connected? Is there a standard for the interconnecting wiring loom? Can you pick out power, ground, and comms? What is the comm signal, RS232, RS485, Centronics, etc.?

Good luck.

[Trevor Hale]

You should just gut it and install an off the shelf thermal printer.  connect it to arduino and your golden

[mickc]

These printers use Arinc740/744 and 429 to communicate.  As Bernard will also advise, you need a few other black boxes to talk to it and even then will need custom software/hardware to get it working.

[kattz]

Two answers - I got the pinout from the OEM and "No."  The "No" is to Trevor... can't gut it.

I've got some people looking at my assumptions, but it looks like 115VAC/400, 5VDC, and printer parallel port connections.  This one is older and has about 10 ground connections and 28 "reserved" connections.  Everything else seems to correspond to parallel port signals.  Except 1 pin - "logic ground".

In the new printers, there are two LAN ports and everything that was reserved is now ARINC 429 channels.

Can't gut it, hard to find a printer that takes A4 (8.5" wide) paper in 75 ft rolls that would fit that footprint.

Thx

Kev

[ame]

Can you publish the OEM pinout?

[kattz]

I'll post my conversion sheet.  Sorry, publishing the OEM doc makes me nervous.  See attached.

Kev

[ame]

No worries. Just the pin numbers and functions should be sufficient. I am looking at your PDF now.

[ame]

Logic ground is distinct from signal ground as the signal ground is to reduce interference between adjacent data lines, so each data line gets its own ground line. Generally it's all ground though. You could buzz this with a multimeter.

SELECT has two functions (SLCT and SLCT_IN). On a PC 25-pin parallel port pin 13 is an input (SLCT), so on the printer it will be an output. On the PC pin 17 is an output, so on the printer it will be an input (SLCT_IN). It's probably not used, so don't sweat it.

According to this guy, all you need is STROBE r, ACK m, BUSY q, and D0-D7 (AA z y x v u t j) to drive the printer, which makes sense:
https://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=74776.0

You should be able to get a USB parallel adapter, with either a 25-pin IBM-style connector, or a Centronics 36-pin connector, although I'd have a go with an Arduino (or your favourite micro). If you're lucky it will print the characters you send verbatim, otherwise you'll have to figure out what control codes it uses (although at a guess it will use Epson FX80 control codes).

Presumably the printer is powered by 115Vac on connector pins B&D. If you are in the US you could hook that up to a wall socket. Otherwise you'll need a 240V->110V converter.

[kattz]

As I've said to others, I'm fairly ignorant on the Arduino... guess I have some learning to do.

I thought about a USB to DB25 cable with a DB25 breakout board wired to the printer J1, and plugging it into a PC and see if it'll print.  Or is this the wrong way to go about it?

The 115V is 115VAC/400Hz.  I have an inverter and a small bench converter, so I <should> be able to get something going. 

Thanks.

Kev

[ame]

I thought about a USB to DB25 cable with a DB25 breakout board wired to the printer J1, and plugging it into a PC and see if it'll print.  Or is this the wrong way to go about it?

I'd suggest that was indeed a viable solution. Go for it! Choose a text-only printer driver for the USB device and try printing some really simple text from Notepad.

[bernard S]

all you will be able to.manage is a test print   ..   this is a clever box   wheres as the MCP is a dumb unit

[archen]

Following, would be really cool if you can make it work

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[bernard S]

i have a full.working printer  i can assure you it was not easy i did not do it myself...it required a guru ...plus went through x2 printers getting to work   they blow up easy

[kattz]

Well, we'll see.  I'm hearing a challenge in there somewhere!

[bernard S]

not from me.. i say knock yourself out..lol

[ame]

I retract my suggestion of plugging the AC power pins into a wall outlet (unless someone can indicate it's ok). Using a 60Hz supply for a 400Hz transformer is not good for it apparently.

My suggestions now are:
Specialist 115Vac 400Hz supply

115Vac 400Hz inverter

Bypass the transformer and provide low-voltage AC or DC internally.

[bernard S]

funny that   lol.  just buy conversion stuff   i promise you are going to blow up unit more than once

[ame]

Why would the unit blow up? Based on the pinout it's a regular printer with a parallel interface and an airline power supply.

[kattz]

I have 115VAC/400Hz available...5A on the bench and 30A for the sim.

Don't worry about the 60Hz, I rolled over that part of our discussion!

I spoke to the OEM today and they think I should be able to print from the PC to the printer.  No ARINC429 in this beast.  OEM thinks it was pulled as part of a fleet upgrade and just retired.

All of the maintenance seals are intact on it, 5V lights up the lights and 115V fires it up.  It quickly tells me that the paper is out (no s***), but a roll is on the way and the cannon plug is on the way.

It's a Matsushita printer so legacy drivers might work on the PC.

And if I blow it up... well, I'll build one of those little thermal printers in the fake housing.

[archen]

Awesome! Where did you get the printer?

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[kattz]

eBay.  Someone already bought the second one.

BTW, I broke the seals on it and opened it up.

Only 48 pins are wired.  There are two boards in a 3-bay rack, and the cabling deformation suggests that there has never been a 3rd board installed.

I checked all of the IC's on the processor board and there are no SPI or ARINC-related IC's on the board.

Printer was built in the early 90's and has a lot of electronics reminiscent of that time period.  MPU, memory, parallel processors, timers, counters, buffers.

[bernard S]

nevermind    carry on

[ame]

the printer is arinc period

eem    not arnic  so how does fmc etc talk to it ?

The printer is a printer. It has a simple digital interface. In this case it looks to be a Centronics parallel interface.

ARINC is a set of specifications for how to move data around, and how to wire things up.

If you have a device that only has an ARINC interface, then it needs the other device that it talks to to also have an ARINC interface.

But, since that is just a specification of wires and protocols you could easily figure out how to spoof it, therefore you could make your own (or any) printer respond to the FMC ARINC output, or make an ARINC printer respond to data from a PC or whatever.

In this case the printer has no ARINC interface present internally, so it can not connect to another ARINC device, but it does have a parallel port. Due to the Principle of Least Surprise, I'd expect it to print ASCII text that was sent to the parallel port.

[bernard S]

okay  i say nothing more on it   ..enjoy 😄