Been a while, but I'm stumped on this one, so I figure I'll just hurry up and ask.

Most of my vintage computing fun as of late has been in the world of printers, getting a Royal LetterMaster in my collection was the real hit off for this. My local junk store had several printers in an "Interesting" state of repair laying around essentially outside for the better part of two decades. I picked up the most complete of the few dozen machines, which are an IBM ProPrinter and a Star Micronics NX-15 which ironically needed nothing to start working, and the subject of this post:




As they say, "habitat is important" and I figure it might be worthy of noting where I found this thing.

This thing is both a beauty AND a beast, apparently manufactured by NEC for CADO Systems, who has an interesting history in their own regard. This printer can be seen here in this press photo from I believe 1980.

It came home in very, very poor shape, and at first showing barely any signs of life. Red power light, a fan grinding, power supply whining, and a flashing "ALARM" lamp with associated buzzer. The only key which even responded to being pressed was "RESET," which would cause the thimble to rotate and the print head to buzz loudly. At least it was trying?

Well, after much coaxing into life, I was able to make the print head and feed roller start moving enough for it to pass a self test, and, upon holding the "TEST" key, I was greeted with a noise and feel that made me keep my foot on the power strip's switch just in case something decided to let go. It was a very unhappy machine.
Video: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/705427 … t-655891267.mp4
Given that everything was now "working," I set about cleaning the machine and making it a little bit less terrifying to be around. Here are the results:
Video: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/705427 … -1661223045.mp4

By no means is it perfect, but it certainly doesn't make me want to wash my hands every 5 minutes or think about my last tetanus shot anymore.

At this point, I decided it might be a good idea to actually try attaching this machine to a computer. Of course, this is not a "useful" machine and I don't need to print my resume or anything out of it, but I think it would be neat to see some output on this printer which I don't think has been in operation at least since the 1990s. Some research and poking around inside, it seems like this is mostly a stock NEC SpinWriter 7700 series printer, but maybe with some software or interface changes to allow it to work with whatever machine CADO was selling it with at the time.

That brings us to right now: How the hell am I going to get this attached to anything? Connector certainly looks like RS232, and NEC did sell these printers with an RS232 port, but I've gone down the list of every setting I could find and I've got nothing! Under no circumstances does the printer even act like it's connected to anything. Of course, I'm using the "Generic/Text Only" driver in Windows assigned to the serial port it's connected to, but even PuTTY has no luck getting anything from it.
Does anyone have an thoughts, suggestions? NEC says the 7700 is compatible with a Diablo 1345/1610/1620 and almost every other SpinWriter model produced, but I despite my best efforts, I have been totally unable to find any software for any operating system to make it work. I figured a Diablo 630 or compatible driver might make it work too, but I wasn't able to find anything at all for it either, and it has one of the most highly standardized command sets of the era! I've read some stuff about creating a GPD file for use with UNIDRV under Windows, but I must say I am totally out of my depth and so is everyone else I know locally.

Any help or pointers would be greatly appreciated.

tl;dr I have what seems to be an NEC SpinWriter 7700, can I make Windows print to it over RS232, and if so, how?