Or someone found out it’s connected to the open web and sent it a gigantic print job.
this post was submitted on 02 Nov 2024
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"What is my purpose?"
"You pass the butter."
"Oh my god."
It wanted to be CVS receipt
At work, I switched my work machine from the PC-Support-department-imaged Windows OS (I think it was Windows 7 at the time) to Arch Linux on a foregiveness rather than permission basis. (Several of us did it at the same time and kindof dared them to fire all their best developers over it. It was glorious. But that's a story for another time.)
Then came the day I needed to print to the network printer. I apparently misconfigured CUPS. I hit the print button. And then I got distracted by something. After that got resolved, I went to the printer, which had been printing pages of gibberish for the past like 20 minutes straight. The stack of papers in the "out" tray was approaching phone book levels of thickness.
Ewps.
Nobody ever figured out I had anything to do with it. (The printer was off in another part of the office anyway.) I fixed my CUPS configuration and was able to print correctly thereafter. But it's a good story.
When it finds the answer its just gonna print 42.
Unprintable characters perhaps?
I've seen it do this when the DIP switches on a serial printer are set to a baud rate of 115200 but the PC is sending at 9200bps. Especially when sending graphics, like a logo, but also just when connected and not even receiving a print job.
You've got to edit the printer port in windows to force 115200 baud rate.
Heaps of these receipt printers still use a serial COM port.
Thanks for the perspective! I never had a chance to play with one of them.