[tog] On the scrounge for a charity - anyone got an old parallel printer?

[Stephen Church]

Ill let you know in an hour but Im fairly sure ive a hp laserjet printer knocking around here and possibly a toner or 2 for it 

---------------------------------------------
Stephen Church
+353863033091


On 20 Aug 2012, at 12:11, Cian Masterson <cian.masterson at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi folks,
> 
> I work with Tom & Noel and they suggested you guys might be ones to ask when begging for antediluvian hardware.  
> 
> 
> Short version:  Anyone got an old parallel port printer that they'd like to donate to Dogs Aid Animal Sanctuary?  Preferably one it's still possible to get inkjet refills/dot-matrix paper/consumables for.
> 
> 
> Long version:  My wife volunteers for an animal charity (www.DogsAid.ie) who, amongst other things, provide an affordable vet service to people in disadvantaged areas.  They were recently given a blood analysis machine by a kindly donor but it only has a DB-25 parallel printer port, and I think it was built back in the days of yore when they expected to have a dot matrix or similar permanently plugged into it.  I've hunted the interwebnets and while USB-to-Parallel adapters exist, they allow you to use a Parallel-only printer with a USB-only computer which is the opposite of what we need.
> 
> I know I could connect the blood machine to a computer via a USB-to-parallel adapter so the blood machine "prints" to a listening program on the computer, which in turn could then print to a USB printer but I'd like to avoid that if possible.  The people using this system aren't necessarily going to be the most tech-savvy people on the planet so I think the simpler the system the better.  A jury-rigged system like the one described above is going to be a lot more high-maintenance than having an old inkjet or dot-matrix printer permanently connected to the blood machine, and I'm hoping one of you has one in your big box of electronics junk.  You know the box with 4 modems, converter cables for obsolete interfaces, a Pentium II motherboard, a zip drive, a 30MB hard disk and two 4MB sticks of RAM?  Yeah, that box.  I used to have a parallel printer in my equivalent but unfortunately it got recycled back in The Great Purge of '08.  :(
> 
> So................to paraphrase Monty Python: "Spare a parallel-port printer for an old ex-leper?"  The only gotcha is that if it is so old that inkjet refills/dot-matrix paper/whatever is difficult to get hold of then it's not going to be ideal for a charity.
> 
> Thanks for listening!
> 
> Slan,
> Cian
> 
> PS:  Dogs Aid is a 25-year-old animal sanctuary based near Finglas and the vet clinic they run is in Ballymun.  They are entirely funded by public donations and entirely staffed by volunteers - nobody gets paid, including the vet who donates her time for free.  They are not the same as Dogs Trust, and definitely don't have the same funding/budget for equipment!
> _______________________________________________
> tog mailing list
> tog at lists.tog.ie
> https://lists.tog.ie/mailman/listinfo/tog
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.tog.ie/pipermail/tog/attachments/20120820/0051a63e/attachment.html>