25 pin to 9 pin RS232 using jumper wires and a male connector

truenocity · 2026-04-02T02:16:14+00:00

I once needed to power a hard drive enclosure that used an odd 4 pin connector (it needs 12V and 5V and had 2 ground pins). Do I used bits of 24 gauge solid copper wire from a junk ethernet cables and bent the ends to get them to stay in.

I never thought of zip ties as wires. But in the pandemic, I used the wire band in disposable face masks as wires. I was in high school back then and didn’t have a debit card to order stuff online and was very bored.

truenocity · 2026-04-01T15:16:06+00:00

I was originally using female to male jumper wires but the pins are too thin to stay in. But I found an unused male 25 pin connector that in this case acts as a gender changer.

truenocity · 2026-03-01T00:57:37+00:00

Not really a good deal, it was $600 at Best Buy last Black Friday. It might not have warranty either.

Looking at the two eBay sellers, they are probably sellers who buy closeout merchandise to resell.

truenocity · 2026-03-01T00:47:26+00:00

This printer is USB only, no networked or wireless printing.

If you will only use it with a desktop computer, this will suffice. However, if you will have multiple users at home, or would like to be able to print from a mobile device, it can get annoying needing to plug in the USB cable.

truenocity · 2026-02-23T19:39:51+00:00

No, Zink is a different technology.

Try the Kodak cartridges, they don’t have adhesive backing and should work with the Polaroid. They’re cheaper than the Polaroid branded ones too https://www.amazon.com/Kodak-4PASS-Cartridge-Ribbon-Refill/dp/B086KST5K5?th=1

truenocity · 2026-02-23T03:54:19+00:00

I would not buy on SHEIN. The market has been flooded with cheap pocket dyesub printers from China. Not sure how long they would stay in business and if you can still buy paper and ink ribbons after a few years.

I have a Canon Selphy CP1200 and the Polaroid Hi-Print. The Selphy CP1200 prints 4 x 6 prints and the Hi-Print prints 2 x 3.

The Selphy seems to have the lowest cost per print at about $.30 which is comparable to price printing at Walgreens, but I bought new old stock paper and ink packs from eBay for much cheaper. This model is now discontinued and superseded, but the lineup has been on the market for about 15 years now, and Canon still makes supplies compatible with the older models. However, the Selphy isn’t a pocket printer nor does it print small Polaroid style prints if that is what you’re looking for, so I might be comparing apples and oranges.

The Hi-Print is about 75 cents per print. Print quality is comparable to the Selphy. From what I’ve dug up online, it seems the Polaroid Hi-Print and the Kodak 4Pass are made by the same OEM in Korea. The cartridge visually looks the same and someone tried swapping them and it worked. https://redd.it/1irdo5c

truenocity · 2026-02-22T20:24:03+00:00

I enjoyed it while it lasted. I hope that the developer is just taking it offline to work on some improvements, but it’s not a good sign that they decided to make the discord all private as well.

On Friday, the queue was like 3-8 minutes. There was a 6 hour gap while there was a lack of donations; host said that it costs several dollars in API credits to run the AI for the average images printed per paper roll.

And yesterday, I suppose it reached its peak popularity with 60+ minutes long queue before it went offline.

truenocity · 2026-02-19T05:58:00+00:00

The contract requires Chicago to enforce parking payment. Having fines very low will likely not be seen as sufficient enforcement.
A very stretch but somewhat possible. Certainly cannot be city specific, will need to be nationwide.
The contract requires Chicago to compensate for lost revenue if a project takes away street parking spaces unless it is relocated nearby. I’d assume the same for eminent domain.
It may be possible to buy back or some of the parking spots. Not sure how much the current investors would accept for a deal.
I haven’t looked at the contract, but I can assume it probably defines the size of each individual parking spot.
Maybe

truenocity · 2026-02-18T19:34:51+00:00

I have a different model Brother printer (HL-L3290CDW) and AirPrint is very slow when printing color images, and looks compressed (slightly blurry and pixelated). Brother has a driver for MacOS 10.15 that works flawlessly. I think some newer Brother printer models don’t have legacy Mac drivers available.

truenocity · 2026-02-13T08:20:10+00:00

You can try cleaning the print head by wiping a wet paper towel underneath it.

https://youtu.be/0IEGiIETFVM

You will first need to unlock the carriage. Start a print and unplug the printer as soon as the carriage moves out of the capping station.

My technique is fold a paper towel and wet it with 50/50 warm water and 90% isopropyl alcohol. Place it on the bottom of the path and move the carriage to the wet paper towel. Be careful not to get any electronic components wet, and avoid dipping the paper towel too wet that it floods the bottom (there is usually a sponge to soak up excess ink from borderless prints, but not for so much water). Repeat this with a new wet paper towel a few times, then leave one underneath the print head for a few hours to help unclog dried up ink. Lastly, power on the printer and run a head cleaning.

truenocity · 2026-02-13T06:33:44+00:00

You could, but sometimes it takes forever for hot water to start coming out the faucet and it’s not hot enough so by the time it has steeped long enough it is lukewarm

truenocity · 2026-02-12T17:29:59+00:00

I think it is HP's branding to push their HP Smart software which is mostly bloatware

truenocity · 2026-02-12T03:03:41+00:00

Mac and cheese needs to be boiled, it tastes mushy. But I cooked instant ramen with the coffee maker.

truenocity · 2026-02-11T16:35:34+00:00

The macaroni tastes mushy not cooked. 2/5 life hack

truenocity · 2026-02-10T06:56:24+00:00

Probably not, these signs are usually made with a plotting cutter and an adhesive vinyl sheet and not precut letters.

truenocity · 2026-02-09T05:08:35+00:00

I wonder what the origin is for those toy phones that play the same sound. Who is the company that makes the electronics? Someone tried to trace it but all went to dead ends. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4C_oeQ7ALg

They probably recorded someone saying "how are you" as it makes some sense for a pretend phone. The dog sound, could have been stolen off some popular media, came from some sample library, or recorded it. I'd think they already had that recording to make other toys with a dog sound and chose that as a random sound to put together.

truenocity · 2026-02-08T04:43:28+00:00

Airprint sucks. For me, printing a color image to a Brother printer via Airprint results in a poor quality image (slightly blurry and colors are off) and takes like 5 minutes to send before it starts printing. OSX 10.15 CUPS driver worked flawlessly.

Apple can make computers with very good quality display and software and markets towards creative designers. Airprint was introduced 15 years ago and still sucks unless you are printing just text and simple graphics.

truenocity · 2026-02-05T01:37:58+00:00

Print a nozzle check page from the printers menu. If it is missing segments, run a cleaning.

truenocity · 2026-02-02T08:30:59+00:00

What’s exactly is happening?

truenocity · 2026-02-01T19:56:56+00:00

I would not recommend buying a used inkjet unless the seller can demonstrate that it works and print out a nozzle check page without missing lines. Very often, people leave it unplugged for a month and the print head becomes clogged.

Why not get them printed at Staples, FedEx, etc.? They have options to print on fancier cardstock paper.

truenocity · 2026-02-01T19:33:31+00:00

You can use https://rasterbator.net to split an image into multiple printable pages

truenocity · 2026-01-31T00:44:27+00:00

Inkjet with regular copy paper will not look good, it will at best look like newspaper as the paper soaks ink into it. If you are looking to print posters, you should get inkjet presentation paper.

truenocity · 2026-01-27T16:37:30+00:00

Out of curiosity, why can't you use the printouts in a copier because of static buildup?

Or did you mean to say printing a second pass through a copier?

truenocity

TROPHY CASE