There's a #RetroComputing bit of silliness that I've been poking away at with little success for the past month-ish.

You might remember the ThunderScan, that lets you turn the ImageWriter dot matrix printer into a scanner? Well, @keelan gave me one to play with while I was in Canada! He documented it here: https://beefchicken.com/retro/thunderscan/

Anyway, it's old and uses usually-ignored-and-often-not-even-plumbed-in-anymore serial cable pins, so it's been a bit of a brouhaha to get it set up.

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Reverse Engineering the ThunderScan

The ThunderScan predates the round mini-din 8 serial ports and so has an extra adapter box for the Mac Plus and newer. I was having *no* luck with the SE and my not-quite-complete cables.

Then last night just before midnight I realised that I could ditch the adapter box and plug straight into the 512, right?

Turns out that yes, I can! And it works! (just about)
#RetroComputing

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...just about...

The scanning head itself picks up images! But the serial cable I have is the wrong type, so the ImageWriter's parts don't move. Whomp-whomp.

BUT! If I move the head and the roller around manually while the scanner software thinks it's scanning, it picks up light and dark areas! IT WORKS! (just about)

#RetroComputing
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@billgoats This is an absolutely insane hack