Canon Microfilm Scanner 400

[RWAP]

This is another interesting project.

A customer has been using the Canon Microfilm Scanner 400 to date, with a Canon FilePrint 400 printer. Unfortunately, as with many old printers, this one keeps running into problems requiring maintenance and restarting the printing.

There are two main problems here - the lack of technical information on both pieces of equipment is the biggest stumbling block. We have raised a support ticket with Canon, but they have not (yet) been able to find anything on their systems.

a) What is the printer connector? It is a female 25 pin D socket, so we can hope that it is a parallel port (or possibly even a serial port).
b) What printer languages are used?

As with many projects, the first step has to be the customer acquiring a retro-printer so that we can see if the port is a parallel port, allowing us to capture data. We then look at the raw data to determine if it is a known printer emulation (eg Epson, HP PCL, or Printronix). If not, then we have to write a new emulator based on best guesses for the printer code.

We have become fairly adept at simulating an unknown printer code, as has been shown by the Siemens PT-88 emulator, Seiko STP emulator and the more rececent EPSON ESC/Page LP-S300 emulation. Unfortunately, some of the codes give no clue, and even out best guess-work prevent us from understanding the meaning of the code; which is a great shame. Without the older reference manuals, we have to rely on comparison of raw data from different print runs / sources.

Fingers crossed this Canon will not be too much of a challenge!

[RWAP]

Hmm I forgot to report the response from Canon on here

As per our conversation, do you know what configuration the MS400 has? The MS400 scanner also got a Scsi-kit as an accessory, with which it could be connected to a PC and then you could print the images with any printer which was connected to the PC. MS400's own printers were so-called Fileprinters and there were several different models, e.g. FP250 and FP400 and FP450 and they were specialized only for this MS use.

As we remember, the output signal of the printer was a video signal and required a separate DMP card inside the Microfilm Scanner 400 itself. Depending on what you want, the easiest way to print a microfilm fiche would be to search e.g. ebay for a more recent used MS300II/350II microfilm scanner that can be connected directly to PC via USB and printed out the PC with a printer which is connected to it - works with Windows 7 OS and the drivers+scanning program can be found on Canon's website.