There’s something atavistically satisfying about being able to print code listings, logs and program output on a 40+ year-old dot matrix printer. Hooking up the device to your computer with a chunky parallel cable feels like real computing, where you can almost count the bits as they pulse down the wires.
But wouldn’t it be better if, rather than connecting the printer to one computer, we could access it from all our devices, across the network?
My SmartParallel project was, in part, an attempt to achieve this aim. And it mostly sort of worked. Perhaps, though, there’s a better way to do it.
It turns out I’m not the first person to think this. In fact, there are many solutions out there to put a printer on a network. And some of them are nearly affordable for a hobby project. But buying a modern solution just didn’t feel right. And then I learned of a product that is just old enough to be retro and sufficiently uninteresting to most people to be cheap on eBay.
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