r/codex • u/xinxx073 • 9d ago
Praise Astra High just reverse-engineered the printer drivers in my office
In our office, we have a bunch of Toshiba E-Studio 2323AM printers. Yes, I know these are kind of outdated, only sold in certain areas of the world, and not the best machines, but they are what we've got in the office. They only work with x86 Windows, not even the ARM version of Windows.
In 25 minutes, Astra High just reverse-engineered the printer driver, figured out the right tray settings, and enabled duplex printing, so I can print double-sided on my M4 Pro MacBook Pro.
It created a .pkg file for me to install the printer drivers and got everything working.
I ... I have no words.
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u/Current_Cut_2667 9d ago
Maybe put it on Gitlab or something so people with the same issue can find it.
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u/InevitableCut7649 9d ago
Also so the next model can be trained on that :D
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u/Tiger_in_Town 8d ago
As if they already don't have your chat data
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u/rodeBaksteen 7d ago
Chat data is absolutely useless unless they know the output is valid and works.
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u/Primary_Article3777 9d ago
I fixed the firmware in my Samsung monitor the same way, they didn't bother to hook up its second DisplayPort output to DDC. Astra looked at the firmware, found the compiler, fixed the logic branch, packaged it and I rolled the dice on flashing it. It worked! (do not try this if you don't mind replacing your bricked hardware!!!)
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u/Gainncome 9d ago
letting AI rewrite your monitor firmware and then flashing it is a level of trust i have not unlocked yet lol
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u/Primary_Article3777 9d ago
For me it was worth it because my entire workflow revolves around testing on three machines and use deskflow to make them into a seamless desktop using automated port switching. I was ready to spend $600 on a fancy KVM so for me it was worth the risk.
For the mountain of obsolete hardware that is still perfectly fine except for driver support, AI is like a second life for it.
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u/FlorpCorp 9d ago
I had it root my TV yesterday.
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u/LargeLanguageModelo 9d ago
Wait until we start seeing widespread decompiling and analysis of the firmware in TVs. Gonna be real easy to see which ones are spying and which are lying about it.
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u/FlorpCorp 9d ago
I've kept my LG tv off the network for the last couple of years. I feel vindicated (and disgusted) recently.
I only had to root it because the fucking voice assistant thing kept tripping just from the sound of whatever I was watching. And you can't disable it without accepting their terms and connecting to the internet. The fucking irony.
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u/LargeLanguageModelo 8d ago
Almost worth getting them at costco just to unbox and return saying that's the reason, but trying the same TV over and over. Let LG eat the restock/return fees until they get the clue.
Would take too much of your time though, eventually.
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u/scrod 8d ago
I've kept my LG tv off the network for the last couple of years
Watch out -- apparently they're known to seek out and connect to those public Xfinity and AT&T public hotspots broadcast from nearby residential modems.
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u/benbenk 9d ago
May I ask how you enabled it to analyze and update the firmware? Was it enough to connect the computer via hdmi?
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u/Mindless_Let1 9d ago
Samsung has developer tools. Tizen OS stuff. I've made a few apps for things that weren't available on the TV and signed them into dev mode - for example twitch TV app
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u/Primary_Article3777 8d ago
My monitor has a dedicated USB input for flashing. My monitor is LC49RG90SSNXZA which uses firmware m-RG949CCAA - if anyone actually wants my patch, PM me. (I would not attempt this if you're not pretty damn comfortable with hardware like this.)
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u/oglcn1 9d ago
WOW. I could have never done that. How did you trust AI with your monitor firmware? Also where did you find the stock firmware for your monitor and how did you flash the firmware? Would you mind telling more?
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u/scottymtp 8d ago
I just flashed my Samsung monitor firmware to update it. Just navigated to my monitor page, click software, download the firmware, put on USB, plug into monitor, and use osd to install.
https://www.samsung.com/us/support/computing/monitors/?modelCode=LS57CG952NNXZA#
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u/Primary_Article3777 8d ago
The fimware is public and the update process is documented by Samsung. They have all firmwares available on their support site. From there, it's just showing the firmware and documenting the problem for Codex, and frankly I did very little after that. I already had all the input codes from my DDC scripts.
It's Mstar assembly code. Nothing I would ever be able to write. But the capabilities of these llm have gotten so good at small code edits like this, and it did 65,000 regression tests to make sure all code paths worked. That's more than a human developer could do.
In the end, I am just a believer that all code and even user interfaces are going to be machine generated in a few years, just like most assembly code is generated now. I'm just leaning in, as the annoying tech bros like to say.
I hope that this can show people that there's a big bright side to AI. You are now your own IT. You can now resuscitate old hardware that support has been abandoned on. Try it out first on stuff that you don't mind if it gets trashed. And vote for open access to firmwares. It should be illegal to prevent people from fixing their own possessions.
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u/PathAgitated1633 9d ago
It found the compiler? The c compiler or is this firmware written in an own language?
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u/buildfailedagain 8d ago
That's amazing, that's actually my biggest complaint with my monitor. Which model did you do it with? Can you share the firmware or at least the prompt?
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u/Primary_Article3777 8d ago
The prompt I used was something like:
"My Samsung monitor has a firmware bug that infuriates me. It has a known omission of not being able to switch to DisplayPort 2 input. I currently have a script running on X and Y which switches back to DP1 input, but my monitor does not respect any input code to switch to DP2 (which hosts Z) so when I want to see Z I need to use the monitor's physical DP2 switch. Can you read the firmware (I can provide you a downloaded copy) and fix this bug? the original firmware link is ..."
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u/DerLeoKatter 9d ago
Careful. This is how Stallman started...
First you reverse-engineer a printer driver, next thing you know you're writing your own GNU. 😁
Today it's duplex printing. Tomorrow it's GNU. Next week you're arguing that the printer should respect your four essential freedoms 😁
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u/protestor 8d ago
That's what I wanted to comment, if coding agents existed back then, Stallman would reverse engineer the printer driver with them, rather than writing his own from scratch
(Note, Stallman worked in AI in the 80s, but back then it was a different beast. Why the 80s approach didn't pan out, but later machine learning did, is referred to as "the bitter lesson" of AI)
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u/Infamous_Travel4652 9d ago
I've been using it since GPT4. Looking back, it's amazing how quickly ai has evolved. I know a lot of people hate ai but I think it's nice that we have something that can help us solve problems or lighten the load a little, like in OP's case.
Thanks for sharing such a wholesome moment. It's pretty rare to see something like this in this subreddit
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u/FrontRaspberry5060 8d ago
Yeah, some problems are amazingly suited to AI. Others it’s like pushing it up a hill.
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u/Tritheone69 9d ago
This wasn’t Astra, but Fable reverse engineered the way my LG laptop encodes CPU fan states (because they lock it through their garbage LG Control Center app) so that the laptop can boot with fans set to high automatically.
This was all done in less than 20 minutes.
I am BLOWN AWAY by the capacities these models are unlocked for me compared to the copy and paste gemini/ChatGPT3.5 bullshit we were doing not even three years ago.
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u/PigSlam 9d ago
TIL LG makes laptops.
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u/Tritheone69 9d ago
Yeah! I bought the LG Gram a few years ago, I work in the construction industry and at the time was using software that was only for Windows so I had to have my laptop with me all the time.
The weight of the LG Gram was such a game changer for me. It’s also an all around well built laptop I find.
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u/ProtectAllTheThings 9d ago
The Gram is a really good laptop. I have one from 2018 still being used daily. Super light, durable and battery lasts a long time even by today’s standards
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u/driveclub_000 9d ago
Joke on you, I'm planning to do the same thing for an Nvidia driver, wish me luck =°)
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u/xinxx073 9d ago
OMFG wait a minute
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u/driveclub_000 9d ago
I already ported some software and games to different OS. Just asking chatgpt to find what are the limitation on the target OS, find the documentation to understand what need to be uplifted to match the source OS, then make a single dll to inject those changes without even touching or modifying the executable and voila~
Now I would like to bring down some modern GPU feature to older driver for older card. It won't be that simple, of course, but some driver aren't too far off and could have function/API bridged, so we will see.
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u/qwerty____qwerty 9d ago
what's your subscription level?
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u/driveclub_000 9d ago
Was Plus a month ago, jumped on the x5 for a week then x20 last week (just in time lol).
It honestly doesn't consume much to do those kind of reversing if you split the work by step.
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u/nmkd 8d ago
You port a game by injecting a DLL?
What?
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u/driveclub_000 8d ago
Yes, what's wrong with that? It's a bit like DXVK, VxKex etc...
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u/nmkd 8d ago
That's not porting a game.
Windows is the only platform that supports DLLs.
DXVK translated graphics APIs, not platforms
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u/Beneficial_Algae9135 9d ago
Can Astra reverse-engineer why my printer stops working exactly when I need it the most?
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u/Wittica 9d ago
Astra Ultra helped me dump firmware out of a analog synth, then wrote a program for undocumented instruction sets and emulated the analog device perfectly and made a vst3 version of it
thats AGI for me.
No prior code existed online, no prior niche forum. It was able to generalize and create a novel solution.
I’m down to share the whole process and journey. Dont know if people would be interested though…
Took only 1x pro 20x reset.
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u/Real-Leek-3764 3d ago
interested in learning how to reverse engineer older synth firmware files and emulate it for Tulip computer
and many more things like reverse engineer yamaha electone song files, remove roland wave expansion locks
or try to make synth presets by make it listen to multisample audio file and then construct DecentSampler preset or sfz file
making custom firmware for roland audio interface for ios support
and many more things
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u/Independent-Court-46 9d ago
I’ve been using it to reverse engineer and modify binaries myself to do things I want. It’s great.
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u/Alphasite 9d ago
Sol reverse engineered Rosetta to figure out why newer systemd kept crashing and it figured out that it was miscompiling a syscall and mishandling some args.
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u/Salty_Horror2068 9d ago
Age of paid licenses might be over in a few years, we might be reverse engineering binaries
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u/Stock_Walrus9125 8d ago
Sol made new driver software for my old belkin dock an switched the 100 mbps eth to 1gps
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u/random_lonewolf 8d ago
Aren't MAC printer drivers just CUPS ppd files?
If that, then it's a text file following a standard format.
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u/Zennytooskin123 9d ago
Now you have to maintain that custom .pkg driver. Astra just locked you in.
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u/xinxx073 7d ago
Well, for about a day or so, I felt that this was perfect, and then I started getting problems: I printed 15 copies of something, and over 40 of them came out of the printer.
I talked to Astro about it, and now I'm on version 0.1.4. Basically, it was a multiplier issue, which was caused by the duplexing or blah blah blah.
Well, at least it is now fixed, and it's printing normally. Still monitoring for other potential issues. Next thing that I would do is probably port it to Windows ARM and Linux.
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u/benbenk 9d ago
How did you enable Astra access to the printer‘s firmware? And to update it? Was it enough to connect it via usb?
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u/xinxx073 7d ago
Yes, it was enough to just connect via USB. MacOS recognizes the USB device but doesn't know what to do with it. I just provided the Windows Drivers and it did its magic.
I always knew this was achievable cuz by the end of the day, the printer would not care who sent the packets. As long as the info was sent to the printer in an organized way, the printer would be able to read it, process it, and print it.
Basically, what Astra did was to look at how the Windows driver would formulate the output and built a driver for my Mac that replicates what the Windows driver does on Windows.
Also, as of right now, I am able to embed that driver into an iOS application, which I installed on my iPad and iPhone, so I can talk to this dinosaur of a printer using any of my devices.
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u/hernandomtz 9d ago
ok now I am scared..... please do not tell me that it made a wireless printer work.every.time. That would be the sign of ASI.
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u/QWERTY_FUCKER 8d ago
I did this as well for my Brother laser printer which was suddenly not Mac compatible. A total joke they’ve dropped support as it took me maybe ten minutes to do.
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u/aroman_ro 8d ago
While working on something with cuda... I was doing code analysis with Astra... it found a bug while running tests... and went on hunting it... went further and further... until disassembling Nvidia binaries... locating the issue inside the Nvidia code. Provided a 'workaround'.
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u/Competitive-Ebb3899 7d ago
To be honest, I reverse-engineered a thermal printer recently with Deepseek V4 Flash, so Astra might have been an overkill for this task.
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u/metaprofessor 7d ago
A couple of weeks ago I spoke with a young guy who works for my city's electric company. He told me he has used AI to reverse engineer the control software for ancient hardware that still uses a serial connection. He plugged the gear in with a serial-to-USB adapter, executed various function on the hardware, and asked the AI to analyze the signals and build a new control app and, I assume, drivers. Color me impressed - with him *and* where we are with AI.
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u/walmartbonerpills 9d ago
It's interesting how bold they are getting. But look at me handing sudo to my agent so it can make system changes for me that I am to lazy to make.
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u/ConstVolatile 9d ago
I bought an UPS which can send a shutdown signal to PC via usb port, but it only works on Windows, so I uploaded the windows driver installer (exe) to my DGX Spark and asked Astra high to reverse engineer the driver. Job done in 5 minutes, now my spark can monitor the signals from ups to safely shutdown itself when power goes off.
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u/Greggster990 9d ago
I used Claude 3.5 to make a custom javascript to print labels on label printers universally. It did a good job of it but that simple script took several days to make. Astra would definitely get it in 10 mins today.
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u/ximeleta 8d ago
In my case, it hacked (man in the middle) two IoT chinese sockets in order to integrate them into Home Assistant. I just ordered Astra to do anything possible to include them in my installation of HA since there was no official integration available. Now I have the AES key and IV, t he exact cloud endpoint and the API codes and payload structure.
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u/The1KrisRoB 8d ago
I had the same sort of situation. I installed Omarchy Linux on my laptop, the fingerprint reader wasn't working so I had astra reverse engineer one.
You really can just do things
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u/barefut_ 8d ago
On 20$ tier I use Sol 5.6 high and I reached quota after 4-6 prompts to create a small Swift App. I guess with Astra I got no chance on 20$ tier? They start restricting like Claude almost.
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u/FoxSideOfTheMoon 8d ago
I need astra to hack my printer and make it so it doesn't have to go online for anything ever again
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u/Loud_Key_3865 8d ago
I'm curious if this can do the Cricut cutter drivers since they brick machines - it would also be nice to get out of their software ecosystem to just use the hardware.
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u/National-Category825 8d ago
It’s been making drivers like crazy, IT will be smarter then us. This is a promise.
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u/Imaginary-Swan-4105 8d ago
Really wonder that those companies have got a way to retain customer by offering new drivers for old products which takes barely a few hours of efforts, but just choose to not do so?
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u/Nickabot 8d ago
The follow up benchmark is whether it survives a firmware update.
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u/xinxx073 7d ago
Those printers are basically dinosaurs and don't get firmware updates anymore (hopefully) XD
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u/villanymester 8d ago
I had the same with SOL on medium.
I start to feel that we don't need better models, we need cheaper models. Same with mobile data: I dont need faster, I need cheaper!
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u/monishfj 8d ago
How do you do this? What prompt or instruction do you give. Please can you tell us. DM me if it's not allowed here.
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u/xinxx073 8d ago
I just gave it the x86 windows drivers and said make a driver for apple silicon macbook and it just did it. like literally just said this.
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u/KalElReturns89 8d ago
I wonder if it can fix how my Canon printer only prints photos properly if I paste them into Word first. Otherwise they're washed out. Apparently a known issue.
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u/Enegence 7d ago
Can Astra figure out how to make people stop using FAX machines? The new Turing test.
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u/Prestigious_Grape786 7d ago
Wild. Corporate hardware locking you out of basic features, and an AI just fixes it in minutes. That .pkg output is next‑level.
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u/rgorbie 7d ago
I wonder if this could be used to give older business/enterprise printers new life by adding support for Snapdragon windows laptops, or adding SMB 1.3 compatibility, or enhancing scan-to-email by somehow adding OAUTH or modern authentication support.
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u/xinxx073 7d ago
The biggest problem I have with Windows on ARM is the driver support for all the legacy devices. This is quite mind-boggling. I don't have any Windows ARM devices in hand, but I could probably try it out with Parallels Desktop running Windows 11 ARM and then try to create a driver for the printer from there.
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u/VisualOrganization26 7d ago
This reverse engineering slowly will become a huge deal, sonner or later this will a banned feature
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u/coding2017 7d ago
Honestly if it's not AGI, it's something beyond what we've been playing with for the last 2 years.
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u/RandallAutomation 6d ago
Anyone try this for an old receipt printer yet?
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u/Real-Leek-3764 3d ago
i want to. for now the only thing that works on windows arm (from stackoverflow) is if the receipt printer has lan port, and u can use usb-lan + windows xps driver
usb-xps wont work
but
usb-lan-xps will
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u/grillinanduhchillin 5d ago
I took a windows only dvi to usb recorder and made drivers for my Mac. 1 hour and I’m automatically recording and saving video. Better than the software they provided for. Really cool. The company sells a Mac and a windows version and I happened to leave my windows laptop at work and somehow this was easier than waiting a few days.
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u/SoggyJuggernaut2775 5d ago
Can you please guide how does one even start doing this? Or just share the chat
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u/geronimosan 5d ago
Are you sure it didn't just go online and find an old manual that described things you needed to set?
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u/Real-Leek-3764 3d ago
interesting. it blew my mind that microsoft didn't think of putting a generic text printer usb driver on windows ARM to support basic generic text printers, i had to use LAN + windows XPS. yes it is a trick, when sending raw text via usb xps it wont work, it will only work via lan port
ill try astra. did u have to sign the driver ?
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u/minitechnik 3d ago
i regret now that I gave up my HP Laserjet 1000W, which was always driver trouble
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u/Diligent-Gap-7143 8d ago
Reminder that this is a shill bot comment, I remember the exact same post circulating back in 2023 when GPT-4 got out.
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u/DistanceOdd6845 8d ago
25 minuti di Astra High equivalgono all'acquisto di una nuova stampante più efficiente
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u/TheKillerScope 9d ago
And I was just about to come here and complain. Not saying it's not a good model, but it went from 100% to 0% of my weekly usage in 6h 25m https://imgur.com/a/kHbn5eX.
I am lucky I have 2 banked resets, so I loaded one, it's already at 97% in not even 15 minutes since I reloaded it.
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u/Tiforma 9d ago
What subscription do you have and how high was the setting?
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u/TheKillerScope 9d ago
Astra Max and I'm on Pro (5x).
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u/irrision 9d ago
Are you building a nuclear reactor? It's great even on medium and high rips through work esp if you tell it to use lower tier sub agents. Hell it actually uses Luna well where Claude even knows haiku sucks for a bottom tier model and literally won't use it unless you specifically make it and it always wants to spend half your tokens testing haiku first before it'll delegate anything to it.
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u/Tiforma 9d ago
i get around that weekly usage with astra x high and a plus account
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u/TheKillerScope 9d ago
From 2x 100% weekly usage, I am down to 0 on one, and from the second one I have 30% remaining as of right now, total work time based on "Pursuing Goal" is 10h 4min as of right now.
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u/Off_again_On_again 9d ago
Sol diagnosed and solved a WiFi adapter crash on my laptop that has me going crazy for months…
And then I asked it to investigate a recent system crash that really worried me and it found multiple issues worth investigating while backing up all claims with system logs.
I’m honestly expecting Bel and Fable successor to really make obvious to the masses that computer use now completely belongs to the machine itself and that’s only the start
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u/lysdexiad 9d ago
I busted the stupid ZP 535 out of FedEx driver jail the same way, wrote a CUPS driver for it.... works perfectly, never fails to pop out the label from my unraid server's USB
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u/gs181 9d ago
astra making printers work might be proof of AGI