Pyxaron , vor einem Monat

@foone Because this was bugging me, i played with it, and i found that you can actually just create a printer on the nul: port under Windows, and have it successfully print jobs to the void.

foone OP , vor einem Monat

@Pyxaron hah! nice. And it doesn't throw any errors when you print to it?

Pyxaron , vor einem Monat

@foone No errors, print jobs just vanish from the spooler after being successfully written to nul:

lucas , vor einem Monat

@foone I have real printers that will do that randomly, making a fake printer not work seems like a pretty low bar 🤣

juliank , vor einem Monat

@foone that would be convenient as like a usb stick that you can print too and then read back pdf.

CiscoJunkie , vor einem Monat

@foone I can't think of many things more malicious than a fuck-you printer. Actual printers are bad enough.

jak2k , vor einem Monat

@foone
You don't even need a USB device for that. Just cups…

mehdi_benadel , vor einem Monat

@foone Uh we've been doing that with PDF for years

scalonnec , vor einem Monat

@foone it's called "Hewlett-Packard Company".

andwhyisit , vor einem Monat

@foone Give it the printer name "/dev/null".

Pyxaron , vor einem Monat

@foone If it can be a network printer instead of USB, it's pretty easy to do, PCL uses port 9100 to send the print job, it's possible to just have some software listen locally (or remotely) to that port, accept the data, and just discard it.

I've done that in the past with a generic LaserJet PCL driver, both to discard unwanted print jobs that would never clear until successful, or capture it for data extraction.

zarbet , vor einem Monat

@foone ah! a fax machine. I've heard of those.

foone OP , vor einem Monat

My point is not a printer that's broken, my point is a printer that appears TO THE COMPUTER to print instantly and successfully.

Just I don't care if any paper comes out anywhere, and would prefer not.

bloomnobly , vor einem Monat

@foone Not sure myself, but I'm p sure the functionality's there since MS already has a 'Print to PDF' function in windows so ideally. that should lay groundwork for that

SteveSyfuhs , vor einem Monat

@foone every printer I've ever owned had that feature built in. The problem was that it only worked half the time.

yakkoj , vor einem Monat

@foone hell, that seems like it'd be easy: have a thing that looks like a printer and accepts the print job, then does nothing with it!

piersg , vor einem Monat

@foone it's not as exciting as hardware but you could just write a driver that's returns "OK" but does nothing else

lukeshu , vor einem Monat

@foone At my dad's business, there's a printer that dumps paper straight a trash can, because something insists that it MUST print logs that no human cares about, and if you unplug the printer the fuel pumps will stop working, and they won't be able to refuel their fleet for trucks.

(It's serial, not USB, but it's the same problem.)

cliffordheath , vor einem Monat

@foone USB-Centronix adapter with the appropriate ACK signal wired high? Or pulsed by a monostable, IDK how Centonix works any more

fgrosshans , vor einem Monat

@foone No such device can last long: it would quickly be broken into small pieces by the angry user

tk , vor einem Monat

@foone you can progam usb devices with an arduino pro micro aka atmega 32u4, could work as a dummy printer as well?

neocturne , vor einem Monat

@foone The Linux kernel includes a USB printer gadget driver, with docs and example code here: https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/usb/gadget_printer.rst

So if you have a computer with a device-mode-capable USB controller (many SBCs as long as there is no USB hub between the SoC and the physical ports; maybe even some desktop PCs with USB-C nowadays?), it should just be a matter of building a kernel with the printer gadget module.

bayindirh , vor einem Monat

@foone Two solutions:

1. Install a soft printer like boomaga or similar which can print to files.

2. Get a Raspberry Pi, set up CUPS, add a PDF printing soft-printer on it, and make it discoverable on network (or share it)

A printer which instantly prints, plus it's network enabled! A 90s nerd dream comes true.

robert , vor einem Monat

@foone
There's this thing.. https://www.pclviewer.com/resources/capture/print2usb.html
Though it's more designed to capture the print file. And no idea on pricing.
You could use a RPi Zero and the Linux printer gadget..
https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/usb/gadget_printer.txt

SteakPinball , vor einem Monat

@foone Pretty sure there are lots of printers which already do that

meldrop , vor einem Monat

@foone almost certainly completely overkill for this task but there's the USB raw gadget samples: https://github.com/xairy/raw-gadget

I've used this to simulate USB devices in the past, and it includes a printer.c example

Gazoche , vor einem Monat

@foone https://hackaday.com/2023/01/31/steamdeck-become-printer/

WooShell , vor einem Monat

@foone Can it at least throw a message about an expired subscription or lack of cyan, to make it more realistic?

blami , vor einem Monat

@foone That's basically my Brother inkjet without any mods. Plus it starts cleaning itself making burglar noises at 4AM.

heretohinder , vor einem Monat

@foone the linux g_printer module and a raspberry pi is probably the most straightforward path, someone already has a project for it: https://github.com/Raspberryy/Emulated_USB_Printer

corycarson , vor einem Monat

@foone Mobius strip the paper feed and fill the ink tank with water

maruel , vor einem Monat

@foone I did that by accident in 2003 on Windows 2000.
I wrote a printer driver that was a virtualized printer, saving the EMF stream. It automatically selected the nearest one based on the room location and streamed it there. Sometimes it didn't go anywhere.

My biggest surprise was to reuse this knowledge in 2007 to implement printing in Chrome, given the renderer didn't have direct access to the printer. Heck I got a patent for that.

redthewizard , vor einem Monat

@foone
I have a printer like that.

fishidwardrobe , vor einem Monat

@foone lpadmin blah blah blah /dev/null

brouhaha , vor einem Monat

@foone Take a real ink tank printer, disable the paper-out and ink-out sensors,

darksecond , vor einem Monat

@foone isn’t that just any printer? They almost malfunction.

foone OP , vor einem Monat

@darksecond yeah but I specifically want it to lie about the print succeeding

smammy , vor einem Monat

@foone Linux is happy to be a USB printer for you: https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/usb/gadget_printer.rst (I've done the gadget side of the USB mass storage class and it was basically fun and easy. I'm guessing the gadget side of the printer class is similar but who knows.)

jackemled , vor einem Monat

@foone Those exist! You can buy them anywhere that sells printers. Just ask where they have printers & you can buy any of those & it will do this.