• @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    78 months ago

    I would argue that for the humble serial or parallel port printer, things just worked. Yes, the ribbon needed replacing sometimes, and the tractor feed could snag or jam. But that’s all a see-it-and-fix-it situation - zero tools required. These things took raw serial data, a straight dump of ASCII characters on the wire. Nothing to confuse and nothing to get wrong. No wacky software drivers either - just tell the software what hardware port to talk to and you’re printing. You got boring text, tabs, spaces, newlines, and zero frills.

    For whatever reason, the moment we started to emulate professional printing on a consumer budget was when things started to get hairy.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      108 months ago

      And you got to remove the perforated strips on the side of the paper after printing!

      Printing nowadays is so boring.

    • Phoenixz
      link
      fedilink
      38 months ago

      Nah, most of that was resolved decades ago too. The problem is greedy companies making printers who just seem to forget what printers are for

      • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppetM
        link
        fedilink
        English
        18 months ago

        They’re for throwing ink expired warnings and automatically ordering you new ink on a subscription plan. Right?