Karosium

Some time ago I won a Seiko Smart Label Printer Plus, on an auction, for a good price. This is an ancient thermal-paper label printer from the still running Smart Label Printer line. It comes with DOS, WIN9x label editor software, which does not run on XP, and Seiko dropped support ages ago (According to the description of a later Seiko software download they dropped support because. "The old serial protocol cannot be supported under windows NT" or something along those lines, which is nonsense), so basically there was no software to conveniently use the printer with. At the beginning I used the Win9x software through VmWare but that's too tedious and annoying. After a bit of research I came across this site, that had full protocol descriptions for both newer and older SLP models. So I ended up coding up a tool that, through a virtual serial port receives data from the new SLP software, in the new protocol(or it can just load BMPs), translates to the old protocol, and sends the translated job to the SLP Plus)

During coding I discovered something. The SLP Plus can print to much wider paper than the SLP Labels. And after I realized that I can't buy SLP Labels locally, and that they would be too expensive anyway for printing shipping labels on, I decided to make use of that. I got lucky because standard width thermal paper used in cash-registers fits perfectly into the SLP and they cost $0.50 a roll! as opposed to $7+s/h for two rolls of SLP labels, plus I also get to print more labels this way as I don't always need the full length of an SLP label, and with the paper I can just cut it at any length.

I also made a simple support for the new roll of paper that goes in the place of the original label holder from a medicine bottle cap and a plastic rod.

Only disadvantages being that I have to use a glue stick as the paper isn't self adhesive, but I don't really mind that, and that I had to cut the front panel as the opening was only long enough for SLP labels to go through(and the cut didn't really turn out so well), as you see in the picture the serrated plastic bit used to cut the paper doesn't go all the way, only to the width of the SLP Label (that's one on top of the paper) I will have to replace it sometime, with one from a broken printer-calculator or something, but for now I just use an xacto knife to cut the paper.

Now, the newer SLPs of course have a higher dot density (almost twice of the slp plus), so printing from the new software will be oversized, as it can't print dots as close together and as small as the newer ones, but as luck would have it that mismatch is perfect when using the cash-register paper, as it gives about the right size for the print. Also, by using another paper setting the correct size for the SLP labels can be achieved. I basically just have to use smaller label settings than what I actually want to use.

While I don't know why Seiko dropped support for this thing, I think it's similar to the Creative driver shenanigans a couple of months or so back (to boost sales of newer models, and from what I've seen they kept on dropping support for older models in their software ever since the SLP Plus). This product would still be useful, despite being 10 years old, as it's only shortcoming is it's lower dot density when compared to newer models, and IMHO that isn't really a problem, as labels are still clearly readable, and any barcodes made are scannable... Does anything else really matter for a monochrome thermo-label?

So basically, I got a hobby project to work on and a label printer for around $25 shipped, not bad especially considering the prices of the newer SLP printers, or label printers in general.

Intro: I saw some pretty cheap half-height compaq desktops (EVO d500 SFF) and decided to buy one to replace the browsing pc downstairs.

Problem: It was missing the psu, and as usual when it comes to compaq it's a non-standard proprietary PSU. In this case with a 14 pin connector. (the mobo was a 252299-001 with 90 deg. angled psu connector on the side, the pinout for this is here. (looking into connector (not the one on the mobo), with tab on top, pin one is top left first pin, pin 2 is top left second pin, pin 8 is bottom left first pin) I'm not sure but I think there are some other 14pin compaq psu connectors that don't match this) Converting a standard ATX psu is mostly just pinswapping except for 1, 3.3v standby voltage 2, inverted PSON signal 3, fan control lines

I decided to ignore the psu fan control lines, having the psu fan on all the time won't bother me and the effort it would take to get it working right is just not worth it. On to the other two problems. The compaq mobo takes 3.3v and 5v standby voltages, but standard ATX psus offer only 5v. With the 3.3v missing the mobo won't be able to turn the PSU on. There's the option of hardwiring the PSON (perhaps to a switch, which would essentially be like an old AT psu functionality-wise, with the added trouble of having to switch the mobo on/off separately) , but that's highly inconvenient and pretty lame So the better solution is a voltage regulator. I chose the LM317 because I had one lying around and because it's easy to deal with. It's an adjustable reg, takes 2 resistors to adjust the output voltage, it's relatively high power (which is completely unneeded here as the load on the 3.3v standby is minuscule) 1kOhm and 1.6kOhm adjustment resistors set the output voltage at 3.31volts, assuming a 5v input ( from the standard atx standby voltage pin ) There's no drop whatsoever while in use, and the reg remains stone cold all the way, so the "heatsink" surface on my pcb is pretty pointless (I know it's on the wrong side, but if it got hot it would be minimally useful regardless ) also two caps for filtering were thrown in as suggested by the datasheet.

R1: 1kOhm
R2: 1.6kOhm
R3: 1kOhm
C1: 100nF
C2: 1uF
IC1: LM317
OK1: 4Nxx / TIL116

The other problem is the inverted PSON line, standard ATX psus power on if the PSON line is low, apparently the Compaq PSU is the exact opposite. As described here, I used an optocoupler to act as an isolated voltage controlled switch between PSON at the PSU, and ground, triggered by PSON at the mobo. I later removed the TIL116 from the socket and replaced it with a 4N25 as it had straighter pins (and because the TIL fell out and it took me a few minutes to figure out why the thing wasn't working), but pretty much any optocoupler can be used ( of course, only pin compatible ones in my pcb like 4Nxx )

14 pins (16 here with first column empty)

Final thoughts:

Drill the IN hole (one with the purple wires going into it) with a bigger diameter than the rest as you will have to fit two wire endings in it. (that or change the board design, add another wire pad)

If PC shuts down, front led blinking red It's probably the optocoupler.

If no video, check if the 4pin ATX 12v connector is connected.

Don't take my word for output voltage of the LM317, measure it. 3.2-3.5 should be fine but I'd try to get it as close to 3.3 as possible, just to be on the safe side.

Both standby voltage leds on the mobo should light up upon connecting power to the PSU if you've done everything right.

It would be wise to put this higher up on the cable unlike how I did, or it would also be possible to put it into the psu directly. your choice, (however don't use the hole that the tab of the LM317 is screwed into, to fasten it into the PSU case!! or use some insulating plastic screw as the tab of the LM is VOUT, not GND, so connecting it to GND would not be a good idea)

Here's my hot air SMD Soldering Iron.

Based on this one.

I used a different desoldering iron design than the radioshack one, added a real cheap aquarium airpump. And I mean REAL cheap.

And the end product is this:

The original tip's opening was too large and trying to pinch it resulted it in breaking so I went looking for a replacement and found that the tip of a metal refill pencil works great.

One advice for this type of iron.. You don't want to unscrew those two screws when changing the tip. If you do and start turning the tip you WILL ruin your iron. Since I'm used to oldschool soldering iron I did it without thinking. I ended up having to order another one.

The mod is really quite simple, It's basically what's visible in the picture plus adding some desoldering braid into the pipe and tip to achieve better temps. After a 20 minute preheat it melts semi-large lumps of solder in 2-3 seconds.

Well I received a 233MMX Compaq Armada with some PCMCIA lan cards from a friend. Since finding a dongle seemed to be near impossible and probably would've been too expensive to be worth it I ended up taking one apart. I guessed the pinout, it worked on the first try. Basically just followed the traces to the LAN magnetics chips and hooked up the two pairs of the CAT5 to those.

The cards are both labeled Compaq NETELLIGENT 10/100 PC CARD (they are actually Xircoms based on the Xircom Dingo chip). One had two dongle connectors while the other had only 1.. that's the one I opened up. Wired it up like so:

from left to right, TX+(RJ45 pin 1) TX-(RJ45 pin 2) RX+(RJ45 pin 3) RX- (RJ45 pin 6)

If you ended up here while looking for info on this praticular lan card and you either have a suitable connector or want to solder into the connector without opening up the card or something then you would want to know that those points I soldered to should correpsond to pin 1,2,14,15 on the (now removed) 15pin dongle connector probably in that order. I just didn't want to solder onto the pads because they were too close together and I had no connector.

got IP from my DHCP, success!

Apply epoxy, and even more epoxy

Apply shrink tubing and a desoldered RJ45 connector from broken pci lan card (and some more epoxy for good measure), Enter the Ghetto Dongle.

I've always had this urge to salvage components from unused, unneeded, broken gadgets, especially when it comes to LCDs. This one is in an Ascom Eurit 22 ISDN telephone, the handset I've already modified (added a pair of jacks ) for use with a PC, was using it mainly for Skype.

The base unit however resisted a previous attempt at modification where I tried reading the flash and modifying the firmware to make it do something else other than what an ISDN phone is supposed to do. There wasn't much info on the MPU either.. I remember finding some compiler for it on a Renesas site but never actually got down to anything serious because of the issues with reading the flash.

A few days ago out of boredom I took another look at the PCB and the display controller. It's a PCF8578T from Philps. I realized that it works through I2C so I booted up Knoppix , quickly compiled milksop's milk app, connected the I2C pins to the lpt port and started a CheapI2C sniff, after several failed attempts in Windows with BSLA's I2C decoder (had to poke the exe into actually doing anything without a BSLA besides showing demo data) I had some trouble with milk app at first because it doesn't like hyperthreading.

After disabling hyperthreading it worked like a charm though. I got the output:

Now 3C being 0111100 is the I2C Slave ID for the PCF8578, 55 is a SET MODE command that just sets up and activates the display, and on the next line is an actual RAM ACCESS command that is used to modify the display ram aka. write to the display. I did several I2C captures this way.

Then I cut the trace connecting the PCF's I2C pins to the phone's MPU and coded up an app to drive it from the LPT port. For every character on the display 2 bytes are sent after E0 88 70, then after the 14 characters of the display there's a final byte the works the last 3 icons ( the A B C )

The configuration is like this:

So here's the outcome. Driving it off the LPT port.