{"id":517,"date":"2015-01-12T04:45:32","date_gmt":"2015-01-12T04:45:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wickensonline.co.uk\/rc2012sc\/?p=517"},"modified":"2015-01-12T04:56:57","modified_gmt":"2015-01-12T04:56:57","slug":"continuous-stupid-idea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.wickensonline.co.uk\/rc2012sc\/2015\/01\/12\/continuous-stupid-idea\/","title":{"rendered":"Continuous Stupid Idea"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today I have been installing VAX MP<\/a> on the new toy, a rather noisy HP DL380 G5. I’d found an issue identifying non hyperthreaded processors that has been very graciously fixed, but as the server is currently sat on the dining room table I dare not start it up again in the middle of the night.<\/p>\n

So I started thinking about this idea I had of printing the Unix timeline on the PP404 wide-carriage dot matrix printer that is far too under-utilised in my attic.<\/p>\n

\"Unix<\/a>

Unix Timeline Snippet<\/p><\/div>\n

This post is more a brain dump of ideas. I did think that maybe an incarnation of Br\u00f8derbund’s<\/a> The\u00a0Print Shop<\/a> (remarkably still available for purchase) would be my best bet, but I’ve come to the conclusion that given the amount of effort I’m prepared to put into this venture it’s going to end up being a Unix Free-Software solution or nothing. I’m dealing with far too much emulator fun and games at the moment to consider setting up another one for a task like this. In my search I did come across this entertaining (if rather vulgar) review of\u00a0Kyocera Unison’s PrintMaster Plus 2.0<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So current thinking is to is Ghostscript<\/a> to print the\u00a0Unix Timeline<\/a> PDF to a very long Epson ESC\/P2 formatted file and print that.<\/p>\n

The PP404<\/a> has a maximum resolution of 360×360 DPI in double pass mode. Looking on Wikipedia, as I couldn’t remember, the two common sizes for Continuous Stationary<\/a> are:<\/p>\n