Soviet inkjet printer MS-6312 and Arduino NANO

I purchased a Soviet inkjet printer for the collection, or, to be more precise, an information output device that prints ELECTRONICS MS-6312 manufactured by Radiy software. I got the “old man” of the 90th year of release.

I could not find a native print head, so I installed HP 51604A. Although she had to look for it too. In order for the alien cartridge to start, it is necessary to increase its voltage. To do this, it is recommended to replace the KS162A zener diode with D814D. I didn’t have this, so I replaced it with KS213B. As a result, I got 26.5 V at the output. I didn’t have to change anything else, even the electrolytic capacitors did not have time to dry. Well, if only a little.)

I also messed up with the LPT port at home, and ordering an adapter takes a long time. All this led to the question: what if you run it through the Arduino NANO? Moreover, in addition to the demonstration, you can also look for practical applications, for example, print sensor readings. For example, I wrote a program that reads the voltages on the analog pin A0 about once a second and prints it out.

The printer supports seven-bit encodings KOI-7 H0, KOI-7 H1 and KOI-7 H0/1. In this example, KOI-7 H1 was used. Data transmission occurs after the printer on the BUSY line has gone low. The Arduino sets the desired levels on the DATA bus and then drives the STROBE low.

Purpose	Pin number of the 25-pin printer connector	Arduino pins
BUSY	3	D7
D 7	5	D4
D6	6	D3
D5	7	D2
D4	8	D12
D3	9	D11
D 2	10	D10
D1	eleven	D9
D0	12	D8
STROBE	13	D5
GENERAL	14	GND

Everything seems to be fine, but something is missing. I would like to print graphics. Upload the program to the Arduino. And on the computer, we run a program written in Python. And through it we send a picture to the printer. The quality of converting a color image to black and white is acceptable, but if you need better, then you need to prepare the image with the help of third-party programs for CNC burning.