MiSTer FPGA Forum

I know this sounds crazy, but I am going to float it out there knowing I will probably get torched into the ground.

I've been playing with this cheap "cat" thermal printer:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003341930695.html

It works over Bluetooth LE and is very small and portable. Some people use them via Arduino:

https://github.com/bitbank2/Thermal_Printer

Would it be possible to have something like this emulate a GB printer and have it print stuff out via the games that support it. I realize this sounds a bit asinine, but it is something I have been thinking about since I got this printer.

I know there are some games that do not need the GB camera to do printer stuff. It would be cool to see, but I realize there is an epic ton of logitics that would need to be accounted for.

Wondering what people would think.

Possible. Yes. Would anyone like to work on it? Probably not.

The printer and the protocol has already been extensively reverse engineered. Presumably the serial mode needed for the GameBoy Printer works over the user port.

hernan43 wrote: ↑Wed Apr 20, 2022 4:01 pm
Wondering what people would think.

Hahaha, 1st of all, thanks to your post, I'm now force to buy this printer . I felt in love when I saw it, it's so cute that I'm going to order one !!!

Your idea is not bad at all, would be nice to get it interfaced with the Mister but as AngelicLiver says, few chances that anyone work on it. Let's see.

It is a surprisingly good quality printer. For a thermal printer anyways.

Is there any sort of project to use this printer with an actual Game Boy?

hipsofjw wrote: ↑Tue Apr 26, 2022 3:23 am Is there any sort of project to use this printer with an actual Game Boy?

Not this printer but you can interface with compatible RS232 printers using a DIY adapter. Someone will need to sniff the bluetooth/USB protocol used for this specific model of printer and that's a big faff.

I've used SNAC to then talk to RetroSpy which has the Game Boy Printer emulation support built in

https://twitter.com/40wattrange/status/ ... 6374868992

May be possible.

LOL with slight modification that printer could look like Mister-Kun

hernan43 wrote: ↑Wed Apr 20, 2022 4:01 pm Wondering what people would think.

Why stop at the Gamebly core? This could be used as a printer for the computer cores as well. Would be funny to get The Newsroom and The Print Shop back in use with it...

Printer support would also come in handy for a Casio Loopy core.

Also I'd be lying if I said I haven't daydreamed about getting not only Game Boy Printer support on MiSTer, but also support to translate USB Video into video input to the Game Boy Camera.

Mr. Encyclopedia wrote: ↑Fri Jun 24, 2022 2:05 am Printer support would also come in handy for a Casio Loopy core.

Also I'd be lying if I said I haven't daydreamed about getting not only Game Boy Printer support on MiSTer, but also support to translate USB Video into video input to the Game Boy Camera.

There's an idea, using any V4L2 compatible camera with cores that can use them. No idea if that would be feasible at all but it's intriguing.

In case anyone is interested GameBoy printer emulators like these work using the GBLink cable SNAC adapter. You will need to make sure link detection is off as the SNAC adapter doesn't have the VDD line connected.

Wifi GBP Emulator: https://github.com/HerrZatacke/wifi-gbp-emulator

What you're asking for definitely seems technically feasible, but it would need multiple steps and quite a bit of time.

If there's a CUPS driver for that little printer, it would probably be an easier project; at that point you'd need an I/O program to monitor the Gameboy's print device, and then build a CUPS-compatible image. It probably wouldn't be super difficult, but would be painstaking; someone would have to spend a fair bit of time learning both protocols to transform one to the other. And then either the Mister would need to run CUPS, or another server on the network would.

If there's no CUPS driver, using the printer would still be possible, but then only the Gameboy core could likely use it, because the print server would be local to the Mister and would probably only translate Gameboy->cat printer.