🖨️ It took over a year and lots of help from Claude Code but I have now been able to create a real dot matrix printer on the web that prints from Windows 3.11 in your browser:

Here's the test page: https://pieter.com/assets/dosbox/serial-test/

I couldn't get the LPT1 port to work but COM2 did work (the dial up model already uses COM1), the JS receives the COM2 serial data (just raw print data) and then prints it

Next is to make the dot matrix printer better looking (kinda 3d like on pieter dot com) and have the paper also flowing in 3d out of the printer and integrate it on the http://pieter.com page

My idea was that it might work because we also capture the COM1 data (from the dial up modem) and send it to a Websocket as a dial up connection, so we should be able to capture the COM2 traffic too but I didn't know how, but now I do

IT WORKS!! 😊

🖨️ Little progress: I generated a dot matrix printer with GPT Image 2 and then some Photopea'ing to make the paper go through

And I got COM1 to work for dial up internet to http://pieter.net (my ISP) while COM2 still works for the printer (that was a challenge)

Which means I can now print anything from the internet, like Hacker News!

Some todo fixes: - page should scroll out not already be there - we need some perspective so the paper slowly goes into distance - integrate it into pieter .com page fully - add a local print command so you can actually IRL print your printed dot matrix print

You can try it the current WIP here: https://pieter.com/assets/dosbox/serial-test/

🖨️ It took over a year and lots of help from Claude Code but I have now been able to create a real dot matrix printer on the web that prints from Windows 3.11 in your browser:

Here's the test page: https://pieter.com/assets/dosbox/serial-test/

I couldn't get the LPT1 port to work but COM2 did work (the dial up model already uses COM1), the JS receives the COM2 serial data (just raw print data) and then prints it

Next is to make the dot matrix printer better looking (kinda 3d like on pieter dot com) and have the paper also flowing in 3d out of the printer and integrate it on the http://pieter.com page

My idea was that it might work because we also capture the COM1 data (from the dial up modem) and send it to a Websocket as a dial up connection, so we should be able to capture the COM2 traffic too but I didn't know how, but now I do

IT WORKS!! 😊

🖨️ It took over a year and lots of help from Claude Code but I have now been able to create a real dot matrix printer on the web that prints from Windows 3.11 in your browser:

Here's the test page: https://pieter.com/assets/dosbox/serial-test/

I couldn't get the LPT1 port to work but COM2 did work (the dial up model already uses COM1), the JS receives the COM2 serial data (just raw print data) and then prints it

Next is to make the dot matrix printer better looking (kinda 3d like on pieter dot com) and have the paper also flowing in 3d out of the printer and integrate it on the http://pieter.com page

My idea was that it might work because we also capture the COM1 data (from the dial up modem) and send it to a Websocket as a dial up connection, so we should be able to capture the COM2 traffic too but I didn't know how, but now I do

IT WORKS!! 😊