MintPRINT

Modern network printing for classic Amigas.

Print directly from normal Amiga applications to modern IPP/AirPrint printers using PWG Raster, JPEG, PDF or PostScript — no PC print server required.

MintPRINT

IPP/AirPrint printing for classic AmigaOS - print to modern network printers (JPEG, PostScript, PWG Raster, or PDF; no driver-specific software on the printer side) straight from Amiga applications, via a real DEVS:Printers/ printer.device driver plus a GUI setup tool.

What's new in 1.2.0

MintPRINT 1.2.0 is a substantial driver update, with driver revision 29.

• Much faster JPEG output on classic 68k CPUs. The JPEG encoder now has fast paths for constant 8x8 blocks and complete interior MCUs, avoiding a large amount of repeated DCT, quantisation, bounds checking and RGB lookup work. This also speeds PostScript jobs because the PostScript backend embeds MintPRINT's JPEG output.
• Plain-text PRT: printing. MintPRINT now handles printer.device CMD_WRITE/PRT: character output as well as graphics dumps. Plain text has been tested with AmigaDOS Type ... TO PRT: and MultiView, including tabs, automatic line wrapping and form-feed page breaks.
• PostScript Fit respects the printer's printable area. When a PostScript printer reports hardware media margins, Fit now keeps the complete page inside that imageable rectangle instead of placing borders/content into an edge area the printer cannot physically mark. Fill keeps its existing full-sheet cover/crop behaviour.
• No regression to the existing graphics path. The normal MintPrint Settings test page and PWG Raster graphics output were re-tested alongside the new text path.

PWG Raster remains the preferred engine when a printer supports it: it is much cheaper to encode on a classic Amiga than JPEG/PDF/PostScript and is therefore still selected by default where available.

What's here

• driver/ - DEVS:Printers/MintPRINT, the printer.device driver. Handles both graphics raster callbacks and plain-text PRT:/CMD_WRITE output, converts the result into streamed JPEG, PostScript, PWG Raster, or PDF documents, and submits them to the printer's IPP Print-Job endpoint. See docs/PRINTER_DEVICE_SPIKE.md (and its follow-ups) for how it was built, and docs/PWG_RASTER.md/docs/DRIVER_SPOOL_PROCESS.md for two of the most significant pieces of its design.
• src/MintPrintSettings.c - MintPrint Settings, the GUI setup/test front-end. Discovers printers on the LAN (SSDP + mDNS), queries IPP capabilities, supports multiple saved printer profiles (Unit0-7), offers capability-gated one-sided/duplex choices, offers to install/update the driver, and can send a test page. Its Help menu opens docs/MintPrintSettings.guide, an in-app AmigaGuide walkthrough for new users. See docs/MINTPRINT_PREFS.md.
• windows_ipp_probe.py - a small Windows-runnable diagnostic script for isolating printer-side vs Amiga-side IPP issues without needing Amiga-specific tooling. Useful when reporting a printer MintPRINT doesn't work with (see Reporting a problem below).
• docs/ - design notes and build logs for the driver and GUI, written as the project went rather than after the fact. The printer compatibility page records confirmed hardware, AmigaOS/TCP stack combinations and required settings.
• Archive/, Binarys/, Tools/ - earlier test programs and experiments kept for reference; not part of the current driver/GUI.

Installing

Run MintPrintSettings - it detects a missing or out-of-date DEVS:Printers/MintPRINT and offers to install/update it (copying from next to itself). Reboot after any driver install or update - a driver segment already resident in memory will not pick up a replaced file until then. Then open Prefs/Printer, select MintPRINT, and configure your printer's IP/host, IPP path, and document format in MintPrint Settings.

Supported document formats

image/jpeg, application/postscript, image/pwg-raster, and application/pdf. Any IPP Everywhere or AirPrint-certified printer (most network printers from roughly the last decade) is required to accept PWG Raster, so most printers should already work with that alone. PostScript and PDF cover older or partially-compliant IPP printers whose network support fronts an existing office-printer interpreter and which reject raster formats.

Building

Requires m68k-amigaos-gcc (Bebbo's cross-toolchain) on PATH, or set CROSS= to a different prefix.

make gui       # MintPrintSettings
make driver    # build/driver/MintPRINT
make release   # both, staged into release/MintPRINT/ ready to distribute
make clean

make release does not generate Workbench icons - add MintPrintSettings.info / MintPRINT.info inside release/MintPRINT/, and a drawer icon matching the folder's name in its parent directory, before distributing.

Reporting a problem

If MintPrint Settings' Query reports that your printer doesn't support any format MintPRINT can produce, or printing otherwise fails, please open an issue and attach the output of windows_ipp_probe.py run against your printer from a Windows PC on the same network:

python windows_ipp_probe.py http://<printer-ip>:631/ipp/print --all

--all requests every printer attribute and includes a full parsed attribute dump, which gives much better debugging detail for the issue.

Use the report template on the printer compatibility page so the result can be added with its AmigaOS version, TCP/IP stack, engine and exact print options.

Status

MintPRINT is now a real, working app: version 1.2.0 GUI with driver revision 29, with multiple printers confirmed fully working over IPP/AirPrint from real Amiga hardware. It's still actively developed and not every printer is confirmed yet, so check the printer compatibility page for your specific model - see docs/ for open issues and design history.

License

MIT - Copyright (c) 2026 Darren Banfi (boingball).