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I got a receipt printer. 🖨️ Now what?
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- Опубликовано: 29 дек 2021
- Having fun with a POS thermal receipt printer (Point Of Sale, that is), the Samsung Bixolon STP-103. RUclips's automatic captions transcribed Bixolon as "big salon"... and it certainly could've been used in one!
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#thermal #receipt #printer
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Well, if you got folks over for dinner, you can drop them a receipt. Especially for that mooching "friend" we all have ;)
can you play zork text adventure on a receipt printer?
I was thinking. More of the line of an revolving guest network password.
For a friend that just likes to do their big downloads.
Receipt after you have friends round...
Cup of coffee £1.80
Cup of tea £1.50
Slice of cake £1.75
Biscuits £1.50
Packet of crisps £1.20
Can of beer £2.50
Cable TV service £0.95
and WiFi data use
Service charge £0.75
Sub Total £11.95
VAT charged at
20% Normal rate £2.39
Total £14.34
Thank you for your visit
See you soon!
🤔😁😎👍
@Sean Embry Amended, also forgot VAT. 😁
@Sean Embry Yeah, but did you load the program from punch cards?
As someone who worked in retail for a while and finds these things rather trivial, it's super interesting to watch someone experience one of these foe the first time and be so amused.
Same here. Working in a restaurant they are all over here. I have always had a fascination for old tech but never really stopped to think about these everyday items.
I used one that was attached to a cashier in my uncle butcher
Yep, I even learned something (the acetone trick)
Something I've always wanted to do with a receipt printer is print out an extremely long maze that spans multiple feet. You might even be able to make a labyrinth that is hundreds of feet long. It would be fun to try solving it.
lol has a fake path that starts at one end and goes all the way to a dead end
Something I've found that's fun to do with mine is wall deco. WIth the long strips of paper, you can print huge quotes that span an entire section of a room.
I've seen online maze generators that conform to the paper size of your printer -- since the receipt printer just shows up as another plug-and-play device in Windows, it should work for that. I'll have to see!
1234567890123456789012
Don't follow Ran's suggestion of what to use this printer for either. It is also sure to get you into trouble.
@@biankaataegina0101 how would printing a maze get me into trouble?
@@randomviewer896 Duh, Obviously the maze police will track you down and throw you into the maze dimension.
As a chef, it’s so amusing seeing someone say “I get to change the roll!” I’ve done it hundreds of times
Different type of rolls you silly!
cool
amazing
Always during the busiest moment of rush hour and you forgot to mice en place new rolls... :(
Q: "Is there a piece of industrial equipment you wanted to own?"
A: Too much, just too much.. 😢
i'm proud owner of a partial IBM 360.
I want a US Army arial drone
I've always wanted an industrial robot arm I've been fascinated with them since seeing them at my dad's work as a kid. They don't really go down in price though and then there's the fact that the cool ones are enormous.
Vending machine, coin slot removed
I want one of THOSE watches. With small TV.
As a POS support technician, it's funny to stumble upon someone out of the business playing with it.
This looks like a really old model but the usual stuff is still there, like the power on+feed for the test print and dipswitches to adjust settings.
Since then, it's mostly stuff based on the Epson tm-88, where you can swap the connector on the back to serial, parallel or even a network connector.
Fancy new stuff is usb and Ethernet but it is a slow evolving business, so serial connections are still King over here.
Another thing but I'm unsure about that model, but usually the printers need some specific code input to do stuff like using the cutter, Windows test print doesn't send those usually. It's more on the POS software side to send those. That and cash drawer kickout.
Anyway, it's great to see interest in stuff you deal with almost everyday for work.
@Talking Turkey Reliability is exactly why serial still holds, we even use the windows generic text driver because it just works.
When we don't hear from our clients is when there's no problem, ha!
You're so much true about "serial is king"
Where I work you have:
- The Cash drawer connected to the Printer using serial connections
- The Client Display connected throught serial
- The Magstripe reader aswell
- The Barcode scanner.
BUT there's one impostor here.
The card payment terminal uses USB. But USB on the computer side. On the terminal itself, the connector is.... hdmi.
(There's no logic in the cable so in fact it's USB over an hdmi plug)
Thanks ingenico for that strange stuff.
Hi, I am from the future. :) In 2022 we use e-receipts, cos they don't need to be printed out. I do kinda like the smell of paper receipts though, and not all stores offer digital receipts.
How long have you been a POS technician? Back in the mid to late 1990s I worked at a shop here in the UK had a DOS based POS system I would love to get one going again. They also have a DOS back office terminal and the computer dialed up to the head office I believe to send figures and update prices.
Can't find it on the internet it was called TRANS and then some Roman numerals at the top of the screen, no idea if that was the name of the software
@@georgeyreynolds Only a few years, can't help you much with your search. Good Luck!
Do you remember the sci-fi show "Space: 1999"? They always had their "computer" spit out a little slip of paper with answers on it. So what you need to do is somehow hook this up to your alexa or google assistant.
Alexa, what is π with one million decimals?
Or like Eddie, the Shipboard Computer on the Heart of Gold from the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series.
YES
@@ElectroDFW I'm all for that upbeat personality in virtual assistants
I'd probably just use it to make shopping lists... Also great for all sorts of staple-on tags, e.g. for parcels.
The prank possibilities with fake "reward" QR codes and such are endless, too. Because most people don't personally own these thermal printers, anything printed on them has an overblown air of trustworthiness... this can be exploited to amusing effect if you were to, say, leave something sitting on a bench somewhere...
Rickroll Rewards
Gosh, yes. Imagine a fake lottery coupon.
I wouldn't go with the state lottery or that kind, that would ba crime, but imagine the rickrolls possible with "scan this code after 2022-01-31 to see if you won" xD
"Who says there's nothing good on TV anymore?" 😂 This is why I love your channel.
I've actually thought about picking up one of these to use as a Game Boy Printer with an emulator.
Ha! You beat me to it! 👍
haha glad I checked for this comment before leaving it as well
Wouldn't it be easier to get a Gameboy printer? Eh those prices are probably through the roof. Oh and you wouldn't be able to connect it to a pc... Sorry, had a brain fart there
@@goeland4585 Finding a functional GB printer for a good price is the biggest problem, unfortunately.
I actually would LOVE to see a project where someone takes an old receipt printer like this and builds a GB-compatible interface with it, so you can plug it into and use it with an original GB/Pocket/Color
@@devikwolf or a new model made for the analog pocket 🧐
Some time ago I found outside of a bank a discarded huge roll of 80mm thermal paper meant to be used in a ATM receipt printer. In the span of a couple of weeks I found about a dozen of those rolls discarded by the same bank.
So I finally decided to get few thermal printers to use that paper and in the end I got 4 in total of various ages and types like an open frame one meant for kiosks.
24V is standard/typical voltage although not using a barrel connector but a 3 pin DIN one (the ones I have all share it)
The 3-pin "DIN" is neither DIN or MiniDIN, it is called Kycon :)
@@zaprodk Ah good to know thanks
My local post office ran out of receipt paper, so for a good number of months they used receipt paper from the previous lottery supplier, as they had hundreds of rolls of this paper in stock. So your stamp receipt would, on turning over, have pale pink printing on it of the lottery rules, and the contact details of the previous operator. Good paper though, took a long while to fade away.
Incidentally your common hand sanitiser will also fade those receipt papers on contact. A good reason to take them and either scan or photograph them immediately on receipt, or very soon after, so there is a record you can use when it fades back to a blank paper after around 6 months.
@@SeanBZA "Incidentally your common hand sanitiser will also fade those receipt papers on contact."
Found out pretty quickly. It's the alcohol, I have pure IPA that I use for cleaning stuff and if you spray it over thermal paper it will progressively darken the more you spray.
Anyway it's good that your office at least found a way to reuse those rolls. Thermal paper is quite nasty so at least they haven't discarded them new but used them.
@@SeanBZA i do not think, that ppl that use han sanitiser have the cognitiv abilitys to make a photo.
Here's a somewhat unique use for a printer like this, well actually any continuous feed printer: printing out security logs. With a hardcopy you can _know_ that they can't be electronically altered after printing.
That's brilliant tbh, hardcopy log could be useful in some scenario
Great idea until you realise thermal paper generally fades pretty quick and will likely be blank or illegible by the time you need it
This is a proposed solution to bridge the gap between voting machines and paper ballot. I believe some states have implemented it where you vote on the screen and you can see in a window that your vote was printed on the paper, which then advances past the window once you’re done so the next voter can’t see it. We’ve still got scantrons where I’m at and I like those the best.
@@nicksurfs1 Thats why we often say to people that if they want warranty they NEED the receipt, so they better scan and print it on a normal paper.
thermal ink fades after awhile though
Yes, those Bixolon Samsung printers are used here in Germany by a large number of markets like REWE are Lidl. I bought myself also one to play around. Since I run a dental office I ended up using it with environmental friendly paper to print out appointments to my patients. Another nifty use would be to eqip it with a raspberry zero and mesesage a little task lists to the staff what they should do. Or you can use it to print out the daily news headlines.... endless possibilities!
You could tie it to to an RSS feed. It would be like having your very own mini newsroom teletype.
My mom gave me one of those when I was like 7. I didn't own a computer at the time so I would unroll the paper, write on it, roll it back up, put it in the machine and pull it out. Thought it was really cool back then!
From an unassuming video thumbnail and made me smiled, amazed, and imagine how fun it is to mess around with a thrift-store finds old thermal printer. I'm impressed with the quality of print of the keyboard layout.
This looks trippy to watch at 9:23
9:29 Handsome television man. :) I find this technology fascinating, in more than one way.
When it comes to weird items that I'd love to get hold of someday, two that immediately come to mind are a payphone and a vending machine :P
I wouldn’t mind a bubblegum machine
oddly enough in my town owning a vending machine or seeing one for sale by average people is normal, something I haven't seen anywhere else. you could be driving by houses, and to your right is an old cottage-style home with a coca-cola vending machine sitting on the porch, lights on and everything.
recently I had to pass up a sale of a Dixie Narco 501 Vending machine, had an old SoHo natural Soda panel on it and everything.
@@PhoenixARCModdingbuying a vending machine is honestly a decent little investment. My apartment has a vending machine in the lobby that is owned by one of the other renters, he just pays the landlady a share of the profits and fills it with soda from the supermarket
When I was a little kid I actually wanted a street light really bad. 😆
Pretty neat printer. I have 2 of the bigger dymo shipping label printers (one USB and one parallel) but I've used them enough in the past that I don't care about them.
You can buy LED ones on Amazon. I am weird the same way, I used to be obsessed with them.
I actually do have one indoors, complete with 80W mercury vapour lamp, and with a choice of regular photocell or shorting cap.
Same with me. I still want one but I'm afraid of my wife's reaction if I actually got one and put it in the garden.
I guess I'm not alone on that street light thing, I always wanted one too! I work maintenance, and when we were replacing an old street lamp from the wall to replace with a more modern LED floodlight, you can already guess what I did to the old lamp!
Oh, and I also have a high bay with a 250W mercury vapor lamp!
@@redpheonix1000 You're living the dream. ;-)
I remember getting a printing calculator when I was little and I thought it was so cool 😂
Probably still have it somewhere!
Omg! I forgot about those! I lost my mind when I found one as a kid.
Then I worked doing desktop support in an investment bank and everyone in finance had a printing calculator on their desk. There were hundreds in the building, maybe 1k... I never took one home though, but I would have begged to have one as a kid!
@@volvo09 I can even remember the noise it made!
I ended up borrowing my grandma's adding machine once so I could do some basic calculations. I then was able to scan the paper tape to include with my school assignment. It was good because then the teacher was able to see exactly what I was doing.
Where I live is still normal to find them used in offices, most office workers still find it better to do calculations on a calculator rather than on the computer. They are also used by shops that want to make calculations and give you a sort of piece of paper of receipt without registering it (and thus paying taxes on it), but that is another story.
In the past were in my country popular the ones from Olivetti (a national company) that didn't use thermal paper but rather normal paper with a ingenious printing mechanism based on graphite and an high voltage spark. That mechanism is no longer in use, that is a shame since it uses normal paper that thus contrary to thermal paper is recyclable.
Now this brings back memories too.
YT could definitely do with more videos about EPOS printers. It's very rare to see a video of an EPOS printer without it being a short demonstration that doesn't go in depth.
Yep.
That like. “Who said there’s nothing good on TV any more”
Don’t think I’ve laughed so much in months…
Thanks for that! 🤣
Funny thing, in one of my first jobs we were servicing bank equipment. We used to have the computers, bank programs, printers and new (unused) deposit balance books in our lab for testing purposes. I would always joke that I would once print a huge balance for me, take it to the bank and attempt to withdraw it :D
Banks normally have a test account, complete with cards and PIN, that are used to test the various systems, which are valid accounts, though they normally are very tightly controlled as to who has the card and PIN, and they look at all transactions going through it against the log of who has requested access to the account.
But, if you know the account number and branch code, you can run direct debit against it, for any amount, and it will go through. The fraud division will come looking for that money very fast though, and the recipient bank will be incredibly cooperative as well.
@@SeanBZA Yes I can confirm this account existed too. Although the tests I'm referring to were totally local to us and not tied to any account in the bank itself. We literally had an identical Olivetti machine with branch specific details in the software to play with - but without any account data. Their systems were pretty old at the time and used to break down very often. We often had to scavenge for parts to keep them running (Think something like 8 inch floppies and MFM hard drives in mid 90s)
"Who says there's nothing good on TV anymore?", love it, a man after my own heart! 😆👍
the intro has never been more relatable i always wanted to own random things like a cash register and whatnot and i always thought it was just me
Great Video demonstrating this Samsung Thermal Printer! No wonder why, when you go to the store and you get these modern thermal receipts, you have to scan or take a picture of them before the ink wears off in time.
I just love the lightning speed of printing that this printer offers.
I like that, getting your hands on something you've always wanted but have no use for. For me it would be the ticket machine from my local Tram service. They removed them all from the Tram stops a few years ago and I often wondered what they did with them. Probably got scrapped. I didn't want the ticket machine itself but the computer inside it which may may have just been a dumb terminal. I don't know what it was or what its specs were but it ram IBM OS/2 warp. Sometimes if the machine was having problems it would restart itself and that it one of the first logos that you would see on screen. They were first installed 21 years ago (when the service started) and I don't think they ever got an upgrade, so Pentium 3 era hardware. I don't know if OS/2 warp ran on P3 processors, it might've used an IBM processor.
OS/2 certainly ran on the original Pentiums. I know for sure IBM were selling Pentium computers pre-installed with OS/2 in around 1995.
Yeah, that would have been really fun to play with!
They wouldn't have needed a P3 to dispense tickets, they were probably built around an industrial 486/pentium board, or a consumer grade board they bought in bulk and on discount because the distributor/whatever probably wanted to get rid of them, depending on how stingy the tram company was :^ )
Should try tearing it from the opposite direction and you'll get a cleaner cut. I'm a chef of 20 years used to deal with printers like that in kitchens all the time. Those blades are actually facing in one direction usually so if you tear from left to right you'll get a cleaner cut
Pretend you're at CVS & print a half-yard-long receipt!😀
This is reminding me of how there's a dedicated section on Reddit for showing off long CVS pharmacy receipts!
Meanwhile in Europe, they're making them two sided to save paper.
Damn that mention of fire alarm pull stations got to me. I have an entire fire alarm system in my bedroom.
Oh my god. I used to work at McDonald's and I remember that often the sticky paper used by people working table (food assembly; to label specialized items) would have random black spots on it. It never occurred to me that the paper is heat sensitive and probably was activated by the hot food or by the food warmers.
Now this is actually scary, just yesterday I randomly thought about buying a receipt printer and asked myself what I would even do with it, and now one day later you upload this video!
I never restart my computer now when it asks for most things after installing a printer or other device. Just see if it works first instead of wasting time. It's rare that the device doesn't work. Also, I laughed seeing OMGWTFBBQ!! Haha! Good times!
I also like to live dangerously
Nope, restart especially with printer drivers. Regular software doesn't always need a restart but if it screws up when trying to run it after installation...
@@Mrshoujo Printer drivers _definitely_ shouldn't need a restart. If nothing else, the entire print system is in userspace, so you could just restart the spooler if it really needs it.
Same here. I've had stuff refuse to work without a reboot but it often does and it's never caused an issue for me so far.
The reason why this printer runs at such a high voltage is because it's a thermal conductive printer, it doesn't use ink but instead it heats up the thermal paper such that it colors it. That's also why you're not supposed to keep receipts in sunlight, because it will discolor the receipt.
Yeah I was so dumb at one point I wanted to laminate a receipt. Don't need to say how that ended lmao.
My buddy has one of these hooked up to a server in his house, and it makes it so that any image sent to it over chat room, it will print it. It has its own scaling mechanism too for large images
Do you know if your buddy has any documentation on that? That sounds really cool!
i really wanna do this now, got any docs on how?
I am wondering what to do with meters of thermal paper sitting around under my bed. Now I know what to do with them. Thanks!
@@MrSquekersUPSB Not the guy but a rough outline of how to do this would be to make a discord bot that resizes and saves images to a server that is connected to the printer. Another program, or perhaps the same discord bot (I've never actually made one), could then send a print command for each image that is saved.
I use one on stream and it prints out receipts when people subscribe or donate lol they love it
Weirdest thing I ever bought was a clockwork parking meter from a local authority when they were switching over to digital ones. I sold it to the local vintage car club for twice the price I paid for it!
You know now that you mention it I've always wondered how those worked. Like how do they tell want kind of coin you put in?
It's no surprise it's 24v, it's a standard for industrial electronics. Those are used alot in factories for certifications, settings, etc etc, not just POS. I encounter then often.
You can use it to print your grocery lists!!!
That's actually a really good use if you want something physical to take with you to the store!
@@8bit_coder admittedly I shamelessly stole the idea from an Adafruit project. They sell mini ones of those. They have alot of uses really and if your start to look you'll see them.
That is a good idea...
You could hook it up to a computer and then share the printer, and then you would write down what you needed, and send it to the printer trough that computer
It's also about the only use you can have for one of those in a home setting
i never thought id be so interested in a receipt printer but here i am
props to the company for still hosting the drivers !!
Your little demo with the lighter reminded me of something amusing from work many years ago. A mechanic got a fax with tech specs for something he was working on. Since it had taken a lot of work to track down the info, he decided to “protect” it by running the sheet through a laminator. He could not understand why he got a nice shiny solid black page out the other side.
A possible use could be printing QR codes. This would be useful is if you wanted to reference a http link within a handwritten notepad. After printing a code, you could glue it to the page, knowing you will be able to revisit the link in future with your phone.
Fun idea indeed. Especially trying to find which one lives the longest - the notepad (probably yes), the fading thermal printout, or the server it points to
Nah, i've started the habit of downloading or screenshotting digital content.
Especially with COVID articles, since they get removed faster than you can read em.
We had a COVID positive couple from Wuhan tour the entirety of Scandinavia and I've searched for days on end for it.
From multiple media sources, including national media.
The only reason I know it was real at all is due to my mother confirming that she showed it to me.
This was in January, February or March 2020.
I remember it so well because that was the instance when I knew we were all fucked.
Years of Plague inc has told me one thing: shut down your borders SOONER rather than later.
However, digital censorship aside; you can use it for homemade giftcards, puzzles for birthdays or lots of fun stuff.
This christmas I had made a qr code within a painted cardboard box teasing what the present inside of it was.
For everyone at the party there was a box with their name written with led string lights poking out of one side.
Just a warning that the printout will fade with time.
I think one use I can think of is making quick notes for D&D sessions so it’s easier to keep track of details. Like character sheets and note of items currently at hand
This is a brilliant idea, thank you for this. I’m gonna try and make this
Ahh, POS receipt printers… they really are POSs sometimes.
-a former retail and fast food worker
Appeared in recommended, never watched your vids before. However, I'm a subscriber now! Good work demonstrating the effort to get it working and then doing some fun interesting things with it. Like printing the pictures. People always see these things printing receipts and never really think of pictures and things.
I can't say I have ever wanted to see how a fire alarm pull station works, but now I do thanks
I bought a Bluetooth thermal receipt a few months back. I wrote a script that fetches my favorite daily comic strips and prints them out but haven't done that in several months. Some day I'll get around to making a game with it. One thought was a way to quickly print out loot or spells or quest items for a tabletop RPG. I don't know, I'll get back around to it eventually.
Man, I loved this video! The first few sentences really resonated with me, because I'm exactly the same kind of guy. 😁 In the past, for the exactly same reason, I bought a fog machine, ear protection headphones, several film cameras and I am always on lookout for more interesting stuff😁
"nothing good on TV"... LOL! It's amazing that this printer still works! Thanks for another great and entertaining video.
For years already I hide my shipping info (name, address, phone number, tracking number and a barcode) with a lighter when I receive parcels and packets before discarding the packaging. Since the early 2000s probably, when thermal printers became an everyday thing at Russian Post, China Post, and USPS.
I worked at a lotto place that had normal tickets and "digital" tickets that were printed by a thermal printer with a HUGE roll of branded thermal paper. The barcode on the digital tickets could later be scanned by the terminal to check for a prize.
Bonus neat thing: these terminals can scan in the numbers a client wants if they're filled out on special tickets. It's hard to describe through text but these tickets have black squares on one side and have all the possible numbers a client can choose on squares that when marked those numbers are selected
Liked the video when the “nothings good on tv” joke came up, very funny
Bixolon is a very enjoyable name
So is Bronteroc
@@DarronBirgenheier Now to look that one up...
Thats actually not a protective layer that got forgotten. That's the separation of the label itself lol. When it was new that wouldn't come off very easily but the glue degrades
There was an artist who used to go to one of the local shows near me with one of these, and they had a PI with a bunch of comics on it set up to just hit the button and print one at random.
A fun little gimmick use would be to make it an XKCD printer and have it spit out a random comic every day.
I always wanted to integrate something like a POS terminal or RasPi with a receipt printer into something like a fox hunt, treasure hunt, or multi stage geocache. You'd have to prompt it with the right phrase to get it to print. Not only would it give you the next coordinates, but also like a QR code to scan with your phone for additional hints.
I do not have any suitable locations for a permanent installation like that, but for a temporary event, that would be awesome.
At my internship i could acquire 3 fire alarm control panels and things like smoke detectors, heat detectors, manual call points (pull stations) and sirens. Very nice to have something not everyone can have and to be able to mess around with.
I've always wanted an emergency exit light, and I got one for my garage door! I absolutely love it, especially if I turn off the lights and see that green glow of the man running towards a door.
"Is there a piece of .." Yes! I own a traffic light. :-)
BTW, when you bought it, did they ask you if you wanted a receipt? Did you smugly decline, and explain that you'd print your own?
You're hilarious man. You're like a technical Joe Pera. So glad I found your channel
thank you VERY MUCH, i went to ebay and bought a receipt printer... no, i didn't needed one either, but the urge was becoming irresistable!
Always great to have something checked off the bucket list 😄
That would come in handy when those annoying receipt checkers at the Walmart door bother you. Print out a receipt with the Walmart logo on the top, and the picture of the guy on the tv below it! That would be hilarious!
You don’t actually have to show them your receipt, it’s not legally required. Now you do have to show your receipt at Costco as it’s a condition of your membership, but at stores like Walmart, once you check out, you’re good to go
I developed quite a fascination for POS equipment when I started my first customer service job, which has lead me to purchasing and using my own POS equipment for fun and experimenting with it. I'm not sure what this printer would've been used for, but I doubt it was used with a cash register (the smaller paper size, lack of a paper cutter, and the difficulty with replacing the paper lead me to that conclusion). Interestingly enough, when Stein Mart was liquidating their assets, I picked up a whole box of Stein Mart branded receipt paper for $5, which is perfect to use with my setup since the only expendable item I use is receipt paper. I can't remember if they were liquidating their registers (I want to say no, but they might have been way too much to justify buying one), but they were still running POSReady 2009.
Friend, I have no idea how I got recommended this, but I am glad I did.
I remember I used to work in a pizza place and we had a thermal printer for receipts and delivery addresses. On Christmas Eve it was just me and a guy from Iraq called Mohammed and we were rushed off our feet, so busy. We made a stack of eight pizzas to send out to deliver and put them on top of the oven. When it came time to deliver them, the receipts were all black. This is why our boss said to leave them on the counter but we were so busy there was no room. I can’t remember what we did with those or how they got delivered. :D
Some of these also have a phone-type jack for opening the cash drawer, usually controlled by a signal from the computer. Alternatively, you can attach a bell and have it set to ring on every receipt printed, for printing order tickets at a restaurant or something, though they usually use dot matrix printers with dual color ribbons, so that the modifiers (such as "large" or "medium rare") or special instructions can be printed in red, and the rest of the ticket can be printed in black.
Yes, the driver has an option to open the cash drawer when a receipt is printed, but obviously this one doesn't have that feature.
Yeah I found it fascinating to discover that the cash drawers are typically controlled by the printer and not by the cash register (although POS computers might have the same RJ connector).
You can also find thermal printers with a display connector (typically a serial protocol) to show the customer the total etc.
In other words I was surprised to see that in the POS world the printer is so central in the operations rather than the cash register/PC itself.
@@Yrouel86 Back in college I used to work at a store with the registers set up like that. Every now and then the receipt printer would refuse to print and the cash drawer wouldn't open which was annoying when customers needed change. A restart of the POS computer would fix it but that took a few minutes.
Since I knew about computers my boss asked me if I could figure it out because the POS vendor only wanted to sell them new hardware. It turns out that killing and restarting the print spooler service in Windows would fix the issue so I made a batch file to automate the process and they used it for years whenever the receipt printer acted up.
I use my thermal printer (Dymo 450, USB) quite a lot. I loaded self-adhesive thermal stickers into it and frequently print labels. In Germany you can buy postage stamps online, with a QR code that the post will accept. Those are nice to print on the self-adhesive labels to do any kind of postage on the fly. Never have to buy stamps and don´t have to wait at the counter to mail stuff. If it ever broke, i would get another one.
Had those at work, it was fun the week IT accidentally set it as the default printer for everyone. Hundreds of pages of documents, ready to stick everywhere 😅
High tech in Germany: print stamps online lol
Too bad our caveman post office in the us doesn’t allow us to print and use stamps this way. Good idea.
I bought a bluetooth model for no particular reason quite a while ago. This is a very relatable video.
I use mine for to-do lists and notes. Combined with a notice board it's super handy.
POS machines have always fascinated me, any kind of embedded system or really specific retail software to be honest. Like the software used to help waiters at restaurants plan table bookings, orders etc.
What an excellent find, i never expected you to be able to get this actually working with a computer. A very happy new year to you.
I still have a Sharp ELSI Mate EL-8180 Electronic Printing Calculator. It used thermal paper!
I used it for my messenger business in the 80's for customer receipts on pick and delivery point.
A co-worker of mine about 30 years ago worked for NCR prior to the job I knew him at and they, for years did not require receipts for company expenses until they had a new CFO who changed the policy requiring receipts for all expenses - my friend said that for about about a month the register lab was pretty busy about another month later the policy had changed to no receipts required for expenses under $25.
Reminds me of when our goodwill updated their registers. They sold the old ones on the shelves. I didn't get them but I got the point of sale displays, which are vacuum florescent displays. I use one on my computer to show me my cpu and gpu usage, along with some other stuff.
So weird to see someone playing with a piece of hardware that a lot of retail workers take for granted! But good to see you having good "clean" fun 😄
Weird stuff about the thermal paper that I've learned:
* Sticky tape also causes the "ink" to fade, which used to about me when cashiers would use it to stick receipts to my purchases (which meant that I couldn't use the receipt to make a return claim if the necessary info was erased)
* A lot of older till rolls contain BPA, so don't put the receipts in your mouth and wash your hands after you handle them
* I couldn't think of a third thing, but maybe you could use the printer to write a really, really long skinny letter to a friend and mail it to them? Including some slightly risque photos, I don't know what kind of relationship you and your friends have
Yea I’ve always liked these industrial equipment and buy em for no reason.. you know they are just cool to have
9:15 That half-tone dithering thing is just so pleasing to see.
I work retail and the receipt printers we use are basically identical to this one, though they're made by NCR.
i came here to say the same, these arent anything special to retail employees. I didnt know about the dip switches though.
fnv
Patrolling the Mojave
Thermal typewriters are also fun! Brands like Canon Typestar and the Brother EP series, and a few others like Sharp, Casio and Panasonic. They originally use thermal transfer carbon film ribbons that would use a thermal print head to transfer the carbon film lettering to normal paper. But after these cartridges were no longer made, the thermal typewriters still work by using rolls of thermal fax paper, or even sheets of letter-sized paper (still available on eBay).
OMG OMG OMG!!! When you said the words "ON LINE or OFF LINE" - whether it's accepting commands or ignoring them, I got this UNBELIEVABLE feeling of chills going up from my knees, through the stomach, and up all the way to the forehead - I just reconnected with a forgotten moment from my childhood, getting my first PC (year 1988 or 89, just about bankrupted my parents) and the printer - connecting that to the connetor behind the PC... mind boggling excitement... my dad had a letter he wanted to send to all members of the city council and I said that I can print it, I can print it, no need to go to the office to the photocopier... figuring out which connector it can be connected to.... being afraid of breaking the thing by connecting it to the wrong port... finally pushing that ominous ON LINE BUTTON.... seeing if something comes out of it or not... parents looking... because OF COURSE every 13 year old knows how to print with a new MS-DOS 3.20 PC while the parents have absolute no clue... them wanting to find out if I can actually do it or if I'm just full of it....
Neat device. Love the risky photos idea ❤
You seem to make the most mundane electronics interesting!
Btw you can kinda draw on the paper with your fingernail or something, the heat from the friction can turn it black if you do it fast enough. Or heat up a small piece of metal and use that to draw on it too lol
I've always wanted one of these because they're cool.
This is so cool! I DID NOT expect someone with the same thought I had because I also wanted to own a receipt printer just to play with it for a very long time, but I never purchased one. This video was really helpful and encouraged me to get one. Thanks! I enjoyed it!!
I needed something to fight my anxiety to fall asleep, this video was perfect, voice level is perfect, the subject is nothing too stressfull and it still kind of educational so im not even wasting my time. U got a like from me my friend
a distant relative of samsung's Bixby assistant.
LOL
It's "bixolon" since they got together
Love this. I bought one for the exact same reason :)
Btw you can buy adhesive backed glossy rolls for these and use one as a label printer. It doesn't auto cut but kinda useful if you're ebaying stuff and wanting to post stuff semi-regularly :)
I've seen a lot of cool uses for these. Printing out shopping lists, weather reports, etc. Fun stuff for makers!
10:32 yeah i've noticed that these last couple years at work, if you touch the reciepts after rubbing hand sanitizer on your hands it'll erase the ink
Funny, I have a fire alarm pull, at least one of those radios, and an old Casio printer that takes the small paper, but it is a DMP and not thermal. In my line of work as a mechanic I have had my hands on all sorts of things over the years. Vintage computers is one of my hobbies.
I adopted a serial receipt printer about 2 years ago, from a POS test system at work which was getting thrown out. Recently found (and bought) a new style of grayish-blue thermal paper for it that doesn't have any of the problematic chemicals of regular white thermal paper, so in theory I could now print a lot more... but I haven't come up with any good ideas yet either...
Owning niche commercial/industrial things just because you think they're cool and they're not on a store shelf because of how impratical it is...
Thank you for explaining my entire life & hobbies in a nutshell. As somebody on the autism spectrum this is truly something very common within all of us but I feeling unable to explain directly how I like stuff of this nature.
I would like a receipt scanner. Funny your video came on my feed even though I didn't search for it for months. Yay.
I don't know if all of the paper you'd get for those that does it, but if you ever get a receipt that has pink/purplish stripes running down it, that means that roll's almost done :)
Don't you have this old pair of socks, when you have to wear them it time to do a laundry? Always makes me think of the pink stripe on a printed receipt!
So that's why that's there!!! Omg, secrets of retail. TY for sharing.
On many of these printers, they have a serial port pass-through for the cash drawer. A single command code opens it, so sending that special character to the printer will make it spit it out of the cash drawer serial port.
Hot oil will also erase the print instead of turning it black. Used to work in a restaurant and noticed this with the line tickets when they would get hot oil from the fryer on them.
Ooh, I used to write code for one of these things! The (relatively) newer Epson ones are Wifi enabled, and will periodically poll for print jobs from your server. So I was in charge of writing a little print spooler microservice to take in orders and turn them into XML commands the printers could understand.
Man, those things were neat. You could have it encode numbers into barcodes or even print arbitrary bitmaps. I wrote this test class ostensibly to test the gamut of commands, but in reality I used it to write notes to my roommate and coworkers with little pictures of Mega Man and stuff.
You should open it up and see if the parallel port is on a seperate carrier that can be replaced with a serial. That's the case in most Epson POS printers. There the board for parallel port has an 8 bit buffer chip, and for serial a RS232 line driver chip. Both ends in a high density connector that goes to the mainboard that carries all the signals. Ethernet goes same way.
I loved fooling around with receipt printers when I had access to them. When I was leaving an old job, I printed out a bunch of tiny Photoshopped busts of shirtless Bill Clinton playing the saxophone and hid them around the room I worked in.
Add a e-ink display and an ESP32, you could have house center. Print up shopping lists, show weather and calendar stuff..
One thing I really want is a POS system. Like the whole thing, a Windows based POS system with touchscreen and all that.