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 It's 8:15 in the morning and I've already had a good guffaw for the day. I was wandering around in a daze trying to think of something to post when I stumbled across this site. Sure it's been around for a while, but sometimes the old ones are the best.
“I was studying the C# language one day and thought back to earlier in my career. Back then I was learning the assembly language for a little 8 bit Hitachi CPU (the 6303) in order to control a small thermal printer. With the right control codes you could get the printer to display a custom message on the LCD. Then I was walking by the HP Laser printer in the office and wondered if I could do the same here. Once I uncovered the Printer Job Language Reference from HP, I realized this could be fun. After all, who would not get a kick out of a printer with the message “TOUCH ME” on the LCD? “
Translation? I now have a nifty little program that I can run to display anything I want on the LCDs of our printers. Hmm... I wonder if anybody on my floor reads this. It might blow my cover. Tell you what, if you're about to rat me out, stop by and I'll let you post your own message on the printer. Then you'll see the humor in it all. Oh and I can do it for any printer in Moorestown. All I can say is that it might definitely, possibly, theoretically work.
For the curious among you, you can do the same thing by telnetting to port 9100 of the printer (it has to support TCP/IP printing) and typing @PJL RDYMSG DISPLAY="MESSAGE". The code in that article just encapsulates that and gives you some automatic random phrases. The message stays on the screen until you cycle the power on the printer.
Haha, I just heard somebody walk past talking to a new guy saying, “Let me show you where the printers are.”
In other news, I might be looking for a job later today. |