points by MayeulC 18 hours ago | 0 comments
This is something I have been wondering for a while: do custom laser printer firmware projects exist? I'm mostly interested in that to remove toner manufacturer checks, and fix a few annoyances in CUPS and the printers' postscript drivers.
I imagine that is shouldn't be too complicated to support more HW in the agentic age.
[–] ak217 14 hours ago
[–] DaSHacka 16 hours ago
This but especially for the tracking dots. In the age of LLMs, I doubt it would be that difficult, so long as you don't hit guardrails.
[–] vessenes 13 hours ago
Do laser printers include tracking dots? I thought that was a color printer thing.
[–] DaSHacka 8 hours ago
I used to assume the same, it's apparently just laser printers and actually not inkjets with the tracking dots. Supposedly the resolution of inkjet printers is too low to embed discreet tracking identifiers that wouldn't be noticeable in the final print.
[–] sixothree 13 hours ago
We know about the yellow tracking dots.
[–] wildzzz 14 hours ago
For some of those devices, they use very bespoke CPUs that are simply not documented publicly.
Unlike inkjet printers, laser printer controllers can actually cause some damage because of the high power fuser unit. Running the fuser continuously will melt the printer (or at least trip the hopefully hardwired thermal protection), and cycling it on and off rapidly can be unpleasant for other devices on the circuit due to the inrush current.