Canon printer hacked to run Doom | Hacker News Reader

Canon printer hacked to run Doom

bbc.co.uk

186 pointsdpina54 comments

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The linked-through blog article describing the decryption process was interesting:

http://www.contextis.co.uk/resources/blog/hacking-canon-pixm...

What I especially liked is that this was literally one of the challenges from the Matasano crypto challenges:

http://cryptopals.com/sets/1/challenges/6/

It's fun when theory meets practice.

Do the solution links work for you? I've never seen a link that doesn't return "Not Found".

No. Like the homepage says, the site is incomplete. But really you shouldn't be looking at the solutions, anyway.

The guy has such a classic engineer mentality - spend a while hacking the printer (the important bit) and then spend the next 3 months trying to get Doom to run (completely unnecessary, but oh such a great challenge!)

> completely unnecessary

I'm not so sure about that - it's sure to help get the point across to the technically less savvy. Also, it got the BBC to devote an article to the subject that it otherwise probably wouldn't have.

It didn't need to play Doom. It could have played Pong, it could have played Space Invaders, Pacman, Mario, Tetris. It could have played some variation of Flappy Bird.

There are lots of video games that are now more widely known than Doom. People who have never played an FPS have had Flappy Bird on their phone.

Doom was unnecessarily ambitious. Awesome, but unnecessary.

I'd like someone to make custom firmware to stop these new canon pixma's from cleaning themselves at every start, and generally taking minutes before even starting to print. It's ludicrous.

I don't even know what they clean? What would a printer need to clean and how would a printer clean itself without actually printing anything.

Inkjet printers squirt ink through tiny nozzles. When they're left idle in a dry environment for a long time, the ink tends to dry up and clog them, and you get white streaks.

The "cleaning" basically involves moving the printhead over a receptacle with a sponge in it (it's called a spittoon, seriously) and firing all the nozzles for a short time while suction from a platen-driven vacuum pump sucks on them (that's why the feed rollers spin when it's doing this.) It uses a ridiculously large amount of ink in the process too - Google "waste ink container" for some further reading.

Ink is so expensive, that this sounds less like cleaning of printer head than it does a cleaning of the wallet. The conspiracy theorist in me says its designed to purposefully waste ink so you need to buy more.

--EDIT-- @DSMan195276 I cannot reply to your message (we're too far down the thread) - but the sensible less wasteful thing to do would be to offer the clean action as an option, not as a default on every startup.

To me it seems like a mixture. It's definitely an important process, but it's pretty easy to abuse as well.

The problem is in the perverse incentive that the printing producers have to "use" as much ink as possible, and consequently pay for it, which prevents significant progress on the consumption.

Well, progress would be already an excessively optimistic concept. There's no need to imagine conspiracies - one just need to observe how cartridges stop working before being fully depleted, or how ink is sold at ridiculously inflated prices.

Honestly, with how little printing most people do these days, and especially quality printing that would require an inkjet, I think I'd rather go to Kinkos than bother owning and maintaining a printer myself.

To respond to your response, while it may be sensible to offer cleaning as optional, I'm not really sure that's in anybodies interests. It's simply not fair to push this off onto the consumer, they'll have no idea when cleaning would be necessary. The printer is already doing the 'right thing' in that it will clean itself when necessary, and all that really needs to be done is make sure the printer is only using the necessary amount of ink when cleaning itself, and only cleans itself when it actually knows it's necessary.

For example, laundry detergent companies mark their measuring caps to measure out how detergent then you actually need, but companies found that if they didn't put any mark on the caps at all people on average assumed they needed more detergent then even the company said you should use, which was already more then you needed. People just have no reference point to guess when these types of things need to be done.

they'll have no idea when cleaning would be necessary

I wouldn't be so sure about that - I've seen a lot of office workers who probably don't have any idea how printers work know to take the toner cartridge of a laser printer out and rock it a few times when the printouts start to fade.

To me the biggest annoyance with cleaning (besides the ink waste) is how long it takes, and how difficult it is to do a test pattern print - usually it's a long cycle of "push cleaning button, wait a minute or more, then go back to the computer to fiddle with the disgustingly bloated software to get the test pattern option".

What I'd prefer is a simple pushbutton that starts cleaning the moment you hold it down, and keeps cleaning as long as it's held down. Next to it could be a "print nozzle check" button. Instruct the users to use these when streaks start showing up in the output, and there will probably be far less ink wasted as a result. (There will always be the idiots who lean on the cleaning button until the cartridges empty, but that's a problem of the existing system of fixed-length cleaning cycles too.)

This is exactly right. Of course to understand it you have to have experienced an 'early' inkjet printer which would, if left alone for a week "break" by not printing one or more colors. That led to printers with a wiper sponge and a bit of ink solvent. Better but not really all that reliable, and that led to the current squirt+clean+vacuum sort of systems which had been standard in large format printer/plotters for a while.

And yes, given the price per oz of ink the process is quite expensive (I've heard that it is as high as 0.25/cleaning). And in the least expensive Canon printers the "waste ink" sponge is irreplacable leading to a planned obsolescence of the printer itself. Most of the 'key' ink jet patents have expired so it may be possible for someone to build a printer that is more economical but so far no one has. I suspect if they externalized the true cost of the printer and avoided the ink subsidy that they would not sell enough printers to stay in business.

I chuckled at the idea of using an old 24 pin dot matrix (or why not go seriously old school and use a line printer) printer, it is informative to note that people used inkjet printers that broke down a lot rather than use the older dot matrix printers. Granted the Canon system sucks, the Epson system is a bit better but not by much, HP, well HP can't really afford to lose any margins in their printer business.

So perhaps there is an opportunity here for a new printer from a new company.

Memjet[1] would claim to be that company, but they seem to be taking an awfully long time to fulfill their promise of taking over the printing world.

[1] http://www.memjet.com/

I gave away my impact printer because I had purchased an HP DeskJet 550c. It made sense as a replacement because it produced "letter quality" output and it made a really pleasant sound while printing. The landscape has changed a lot since the early 1990's.

How much "letter quality" printing do I need in an age of emailed PDF's?

Is futzing with consumables at the expense of flow better than noise? For me, I don't think so. I'm looking anew at printing like I came to recently look anew at the command line. There are tradeoffs, and for me one of those with home lasers and inkjets is loss of flow.

If I wanted old-school misery, we'd be talking pen plotters.

My next printer will be a 24 pin, wide carriage dot matrix with a tractor feed. Though it seems counterproductive to use a high duty cycle device for the small amount of printing I do, truth is that the racket of an impact printer is a small tradeoff.

It used to be that inkjet would print black with an empty color cartridge. Now, printing something may take hours or days until I get to the store to buy a Yellow...nevermind if I order from Amazon. An impact printer just prints lighter as ink is depleted.

Printing should just work. It doesn't any more. I miss my Star Micronics NX80.

What's the driver support for dot matrix printers like in linux these days?

Given the business use case, I doubt it is worse than for consumer oriented models.

e.g. http://www.okidata.com/drivers

Also, keeping in mind that dot matrix printers are old hardware, there has been a long time for someone to write a driver:

e.g. http://www.openprinting.org/printer/Oki/Oki-ML-520

Have you looked into laser printers? I've found that for sporadic printing they're much better than inkjets, and not too expensive as long as you don't want color.

This is what me and my wife did. She bought the same laser printer she has at work for home and it works amazing. It was cheap, and not being caught in the ink racket makes it cheaper.

There's very few instances you actually need to print in colour.

This is what I did. I bought a Brother monochrome laser printer (HD-53??) back in 2012 for use printing out college junk. If memory serves, I was on the starter cartridge for a year or so, In fact, I may still be on the starter cartridge. I can't even remember if I bought a new cartridge.

The total cost has only been about $150 or $200.

I second the advice to just buy a simple business laser printer. I too have had it with inkjets and the refill scam, but a typical laser cartridge is good for thousands of pages. Although I have a technician's nostalgia for dot matrix printers, I can't think of any valid reason to run one for normal home printing needs.

I'm not nostalgic. Back in 2002, I bought a cheap little Brother laser fax. Refills ran $30 for a few thousand pages; I could make copies; and life was grand. In 2007, the output degraded to crap when the drum died. The cost of a replacement drum was more than I paid originally, so it went to the dumpster. I've pitched a lot of printers over the years. Other than the three I have currently, the only two I gave away in working condition were the Star I bought in 1988 and an Hp 550c [a printer that made pleasant noises unlike the 600 series that succeeded it].

Anyway, I'm tired of pitching printers. Wide carriage allows printing US B size drawings. Tractor feed means not running out of paper in the middle of a job. And impact technology means not thinking about running out of Magenta every time I print something.

I don't want to wait for nozzles to.clean or fusers to heat up. I just want the damn thing printed quick enough that I don't have time to browse HN. It's about flow.

Slightly OT, but what is everyone's favorite minimalist printer? Are there any?

I avoid printing like the plague, but sometimes you just need to print a ticket, letter, or a photo of a document you have on your computer. I don't need a scanner, wifi, 500MB of software, or even color. I need something which is small and out of the way when I'm not using it (most of the time), cheap, and ready to go when I have to print something.

I kinda miss dot-matrix printers, to be honest.

I have a Brother HL-2270DW for the rare printing that I do need to do at home. Has been great so far.

I have a ~ 10-year-old HL-2040 that's somehow still running. I use it for printing throw-away stuff like notes or recipes. It was maybe $30. It predates even the toner cartridge caps being welded on, so refills are relatively painless and $4.

I have this printer hidden in a corner. You would never notice it is there until it receives a job over the wifi. Simple and just works.

I also have this printer and would highly recommend it. It's cheap and it works great.

Yup. There's a reason it's been Amazon's best-selling laser printer for... at least a year, I think.

Chinese printnet! XD

EDIT:

Stupid comment... Brother Industries is actually a Japanese company. Learn something new every day.

Older laser printers with network support is what I prefer. No drivers, just point postscript at its IP address and go. Some have weird gotchas on Linux, so try for older HPs. Don't mind their age, they're built to last and 2D printing technology hasn't changed much in years.

Just saw this http://deals.kinja.com/this-wireless-laser-printer-will-make... Not trying to promote anybody, just read the comments. There are some people happy. I've rarely associated happiness and printers.

Bought an HP DeskJet 2540 for £39 for home. Has WiFi, colour, a scanner and just works over the LAN without any effort so is probably the opposite to what you desire.

However I've lost count of the number of times the scanner/copier has been useful even though I didn't want that bit to start with and the WiFi actually makes it easier to use. No more finding that USB cable.

It's the peak of value to be honest and a worthy trade off.

I don't think I've ever used a scanner since the camera became half decent on the iPhone. Even when I have 40 pages of text to scan, it's more straightforward to just snap it from my desk than to walk the 50' or so to the $8000 scanning/printer we have in the office. And, when I'm in the field - well, you get the idea.

I guess if I was scanning hundreds of pages, It would probably be worthwhile to use a desktop scanner, but for 40 pages or less - smart phone camera wins every time.

Everyone has their own priorities and processes. For me, being able to throw half a dozen pages into a document feeder and get a small, good-quality PDF in my email a minute later is a big step up from the effort I used to put into assembling image files into multi-page online resources for my students.

What do you do to minimize irritants like uneven margins and wonky viewing angles? (Every time I've photographed printed pages, I've wound up feeling stuck with a bunch of work to make the output actually look reasonable.)

> What do you do to minimize irritants like uneven margins and wonky viewing angles?

My favorite solution: CamScanner. It's one of the apps I use most on my Android phone, and is available on iOS too. There's a free version and a Pro version for $5. I don't know the differences offhand, but I bought the Pro version without a second thought after trying the free one.

It autodetects the edges of your document and crops and deskews it, and then enhances the color/brightness/contrast for readability. It will do this automatically or you can adjust the cropping and enhancement manually.

For more intensive cleaning up of scans (either from a camera or a scanner), there's a wonderful open source app called Scan Tailor:

http://scantailor.org/

A few months ago I scanned an old manual for the SIMPL (Systems IMPLementation) language we developed and used at Tymshare in the '70s. It was a photocopy of an original manual with most of the pages skewed a bit one way or the other, and dark speckles all over the place.

I cut off the binding (lucky for me it was Velobind so I just cut off the back strip with a knife and had it re-bound at Kinko's when done) and ran the pages through my Brother MFC-9070cdw at 600 dpi. Scan Tailor took the page images and deskewed them, removed the speckles and generally cleaned things up. There were one or two pages where I made some manual adjustments - and also I turned off the feature where it zooms the page to fit just the text on it since I wanted the text to be the same size on all pages. Other than that I just let it do its thing and the result was pretty nice - the PDF looks much better than the original manual!

I bought a scanner earlier this year, but I use it exclusively for scanning film negatives. (and positives on occasion; slide film is gorgeous!)

I also bought a dedicated semi-pro photo printer last year. A full load of ink costs me $120 for 8 itty bitty tanks.

Apple LaserWriter 16/600 PS (1994)

Got it on eBay for 1 Euro. Eats standard HP LaserJet cartridges that you can find on eBay for just a few bucks.

I use Samsung's ML-2851MD, an inexpensive black and white laser: http://www.samsung.com/us/support/owners/product/ML-2851ND

Pros: fast, reliable, inexpensive to operate (I've had it for 4 years and have yet to need to buy a new toner cartridge), speaks PCL & PostScript out of the box so it works fine on Linux without any vendor-specific software, includes an Ethernet port so I can plug it into my home network, supports duplex printing (printing on front and back of a sheet of paper).

Cons: can't print in color. Really, that's about it.

I don't think this particular model is still for sale, but this $199 model from their current lineup looks like the modern equivalent: http://www.samsung.com/us/computer/printers/SL-M3320ND/XAA

This probably isn't quite in the spirit of what you're asking, but I like old laser printers. You can get an HP LaserJet 4m for less than $75 just about anywhere, the toner cartridges are less than $50 and will probably outlast any basic needs you have, and if it has any problems it's easy enough to clean and replacement rubber rollers can be purchased cheaply. The service manual is even freely available and it describes the device's theory of operation. Cool!

The only thing is that the 4M and 5M probably use a large amount of power compared to their modern counterparts - anyone got any measurements?

You should be able to throw most dialects of PCL and PostScript at those printers and they'll work fine, so this fits the GP's requirements (not having 500mb of software)

Anyone know how to make Windows speak PostScript?

Yep, printer drivers are already available in Windows, which is nice. According to the manual, the 4m uses 195W when printing, and 55W in standby. The 5m is 300/80, and 22W in "power save" mode. I'm guessing that's a mode where the fuser is fully cooled off, so it's probably slow to spool up if you enable that.

It's been mentioned, but the Brother HL-2270DW. Only printer I've ever felt the need to evangelize. Auto duplex, very fast, wifi, unobtrusive. It just works.

Whenever I have a question like this I turn to The Wirecutter, they usually deliver.

http://thewirecutter.com/leaderboard/printers-2/

Would've been so much more awesome (not that it isn't already) if it could print screenshots of the game too.

Reminds me of the sadly-defunct It Plays Doom site https://web.archive.org/web/20070320131602/http://www.itplay...

Here's the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INZR9P_SnjY

I was hoping for a huge stack of Doom frames rolling out of the printer.

SMBC might be starting to overtake XKCD for king of referenceable (is that a word?) comics.

http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2158#comic

I wonder if you could turn his work into a preprocessor, so you could just compile a more general source code into a Pixma binary :)

Printers do crazy things. Grace Mink hacked one at MHacks IV to print make up.

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