printer roms (dmp-2000 etc)

[ivarf]

Hi Ivar 


Why change the burglaralarmcode, as no one would guess it is "6128".
 
Besides, what are the chances You would come by ? ? ? 


Terje Grind
NORWAY

True, my kid, family and moving to a new home has taken too much time. 

[Ynot.zer0]

I scanned the DMP 2000 User Guide (English)... only drawback is it is 30mb... or 21mb if I drop the quality a bit... where can I upload the PDF to?  or can I email someone the .PNG images and they can make a PDF for me?.... (I note that the wiki limits uploads to 20mb)...

[nocash]

Great. You email it to - ah no, not to me - my mailbox limit is 12MB, so it won't work.

Do you have irfan view? With it's "batch conversion" feature (found in its File menu) you could convert all files (in one step) from bloated/lossless PNG format to smaller/lossy JPGs.

The same batch feature also allows to reduce the resolution, 1200 pix horizontally should be more than enough (but don't forget to click the <Resample>-checkbox, else it'll only do an ugly <resize>).

I guess that should fix the size problem. Thereafter... you do have a jpg-to-pdf tool at home, or don't you?

---

Can't wait to see the DMP2000 manual :-)

[Terje_Norway]

Hi,


The DMP2160 (German) manual has just been mailed of to Martin 


Now it is up to him to get it up on the net.


I'll scan the DMP3160 (English) within the next days.


Yours


Terje Grind
NORWAY

[Gryzor]

If it's a black&white manual it'd be better to have a gif than a JPG I think... Failing that, you could email it to me and I'll FTP it to the wiki...

That said, I was away for a few days and I see some people went berserk with the printers

[Ynot.zer0]

Link to zip file now connected to the Manual listed at the bottom of this wiki page:
http://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Amstrad/Schneider_DMP2000_Printer#Manuals

[nocash]

Found the English DMP2000 on the http://share.cpcwiki.eu/files.php page. Good to see it! But mind that it's a temporary upload page (deleted after 300 days). So linking to it from inside of wiki pages is a time-bomb!

The file contains grayscale images (not plain black & white), 20MB for 91 pages. For grayscale's jpg should be ideal. Using a bit more lossy quality setting should allow to squeeze it into 5..8 MB without looking worse. For example, Terje's http://cpcwiki.eu/index.php/File:Schneider_DMP2160_User_Manual_(German).pdf looks fine too me, and it's only 8MB for 89 pages (actually it was only 5MB, but my jpg-to-pdf converter changed it from 8bit mono to 24bit color & somehow fucked up the compression rate).

For daily use, I'd prefer a smaller version of the English DMP2000 manual. ynot.zer0, can you make one? or upload it as (zipped) single page jpg/pngs on the share page? (so I could try it on my own) (I don't have a tool to modify images once when they are in pdf format).

If somebody wants to preserve the 20MB file in it's full beauty... Gryzor, can you ftp a copy from "share" to cpcwiki?

[Ynot.zer0]

The front page image was scanned in colour (and was 15mb, hence large file size).  All other pages were scanned black&white.


The forum has a limit of filesize per post, so I'll attach the zipped png images after this post

[Ynot.zer0]

file1

[Ynot.zer0]

file2

[Ynot.zer0]

file3

[Ynot.zer0]

file4

[nocash]

Thanks! Already uploaded it, http://cpcwiki.eu/imgs/5/5c/Amstrad_DMP2000_User_Manual_(English).pdf (6MB).
It's converted from 1bpp to 24bpp grayscale, and then resampled to 700pix width with rather highly-lossy setting. Quality seems to be still good enough to me. To you, too? They grayscale/resampling is giving it some "anti-aliasing" effect, which is nice for screen viewing (maybe not so good for printing, though I doubt many people will want to print it).

[Ynot.zer0]

looks good to me!  thanks for your help in making it into a PDF.


I'm just glad I could (finally) contribute something useful to the cpc wiki! 

[nocash]

Are you going to scan the Enlish DMP2160, too? Don't know how much work it'd be - and how far it'd be worth doing it. At one point it'd be nice to have at, on the other hand it's probably 99% same as the DMP2000 manual.

At least Terje's german DMP2160 scan looked a lot like that. Schneider didn't even change the name from DMP2000 to DMP2160 on the first three pages :-) what they have changed is the frontpage, and the technical details on page 69 (with the faster 160cps and 160ms timings). Maybe some other pages are changed, too. Hard to see.

I've started making a list of the control codes. And compared DMP2000 with DMP3160. The only new code I've found is "1Bh 6Dh nnh" for some charset selection. Also compared it with the Epson FX80 that the DMPs are said to be compatible with - most codes are actually same - the biggest difference is that the FX80 didn't have NLQ support.

[nocash]

Some news: I've completed the list of control codes, http://cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Amstrad_Printers, I've compared the various docs with each other: the DMP2xxx/3xxx seem to be really fully Epson FX80 compatible, plus some extra codes (and LX80-style code for NLQ, and a nonstandard-Amstrad-code for IBM charset which works on DMP3xxx only).

Nilquader took a photo of the interiors of the NLQ401 printer head, http://cpcwiki.eu/index.php/NLQ401 - never hoped to see that - the pics are showing only the magnets & levers, not the actual wire-pins that hit the ribbon; some animated illustration of the mechanics is here, http://mimech.com/printers/ the webpage seems to be also offering a repair-service for printer heads (so disassembling, and especially reassembling the heads seems to be well possible).

I've also found a DMP1 Service Manual, http://www.museo8bits.es/impresoras/manuales/index.html, but for whatever reason the server doesn't permit to download the Amstrad docs :-( does somebody know how to get that file? I've also sent an (english) email to museo8bits, but got no reply yet.

---

Any new scanned manuals coming soon? Nilquader's DMP2160 and Terje's DMP3000/3160 manuals would be nice to have! Please blow up some hours (days?) on scanning :-)

Oh, and some photo/gallery ideas for people who do have old printers / nothing better to do: Photo of the ribbon cassette, PCB board, and printer top/side/front views would be great. And a scanned print-out would be nice to show the print quality & different styles; best using the printers built-in test-mode features... for doing that, does somebody know how to resurrect dry ribbons? Using re-inking sets? Or soaking them in water or in something else?

[Terje_Norway]

Hi,


You'll get the DMP3000/3160 User Instructions (English later this week)


I have also been able to get hold of the DMP3000/3160/3250di User Instructions (English)
(Won on Ebay). Have paid for it, but it isn't marked as sent. Hopefully I'll have it with a few weeks. I'll also scan it when I get it.


For the time being, I'm a bit busy with the HxC hardware and my Transcend SD cards.


Yours


Terje Grind
Norway

[robcfg]

Hey guys,


I went yesterday to CPCManiaco's place and grabbed the DMP2000 eprom.


You can find the rom file in the DMP2000 page.


I hope you find it useful, though it doesn't seem to contain the character set, maybe it is contained in the microcontroller's SRAM. I guess it is not easy to get the info contained there, but if anybody knows how to do it, I'll try it.


Have a nice day! 

[arnoldemu]

Hey guys,


I went yesterday to CPCManiaco's place and grabbed the DMP2000 eprom.


You can find the rom file in the DMP2000 page.


I hope you find it useful, though it doesn't seem to contain the character set, maybe it is contained in the microcontroller's SRAM. I guess it is not easy to get the info contained there, but if anybody knows how to do it, I'll try it.


Have a nice day! 

thanks.
The Dmp-2000 service manual seems to indicate it has a NEC 7811 CPU which has 4k of onboard program rom.
So not sure exactly what this rom is storing and I can't find a 7811 dissassembler yet.

[robcfg]

You are welcome!


If we find another printer, we'll do our best to get the roms.

[mahlemiut]

So not sure exactly what this rom is storing and I can't find a 7811 dissassembler yet.

How about unidasm, one of the tools that are a part of the MAME / MESS source?  MAME has a uPD7810/11 core.

[arnoldemu]

How about unidasm, one of the tools that are a part of the MAME / MESS source?  MAME has a uPD7810/11 core.

thanks. I used it and the dissassembly was bullshit.
So I loaded the file into arnold and used it's graphics viewer and I can see *some* chars.
They are on their side. But I can't work out yet a consistent width that works with them. So they are likely to have extra data with them.
I can see - > and some letters.

[Devilmarkus]

I can see all letters.
(I used Winape, width to 1, height to 12)
The screen I got, I rotated about 90° and also mirrored horizontally.
Result:


Seems that the font is a kind of encrypted?

[robcfg]

Maybe it's just that is has some other data between the characters or maybe it's the way the data is stored for that microcontroller.

[arnoldemu]

Maybe it's just that is has some other data between the characters or maybe it's the way the data is stored for that microcontroller.

Or is it odd/even lines?

first batch of chars are the even lines (0,2,4,6,8 etc), then next batch of chars are the odd lines (1,3,5 etc).
I can see the chars repeat. and it seems that they are really 24 lines tall.
Look you can see two capital M's in there.

EDIT: And one byte from each char seems to be reserved for "control". Maybe used to control italics or double width or similar?