MintPRINT

Modern network printing for classic Amigas.

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

MintPRINT includes a real DEVS:Printers/ printer.device driver and MintPrint Settings for setup, discovery and test printing.

Installation · Printer compatibility · Release history

What's new in 1.3.3

• Final driver revision 41.19.
• Selected-unit Test Print: testing Unit1-Unit7 uses that profile for the one job without replacing the active printer.
• Non-destructive activation: Activate writes a separate live profile; Unit0-Unit7 are preserved as independent saved printer profiles.
• Query results now save correctly: media/tray, colour, quality and scaling choices selected by Query Printer are synchronised with the Unit config, including on the AmigaOS 2.x-compatible event path.
• Failed RAM-spooled jobs are recoverable: View Spooler shows the current RAM/T: job and keeps a failed rendered document available for Retry, Copies or Delete. Successful RAM jobs are still removed automatically.

Full release history and technical details

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, PDF, or Apple Raster (URF) 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, detects this machine's AmigaOS/ printer.device generation to pick the matching bundled driver, offers to install/update it, 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.
• Install - a classic AmigaDOS Installer script, an alternative install path to running MintPrintSettings directly. Does the same AmigaOS-version detection and lets you confirm or override the driver choice before copying anything.
• 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.

Requirements and memory

• Motorola 68000 or later, AmigaOS 2.04+, and a TCP/IP stack providing bsdsocket.library.
• A network printer supporting IPP and one of the document formats below.
• With RAM/T: spooling, allow roughly 2 MB of free RAM for a full-page print. HDD spooling can make a 1 MB system practical, provided enough contiguous memory remains for the GUI, row buffers, encoder and TCP/IP stack; it is not a guarantee for every printer or resolution.
• HDD spool storage is limited by free disk space and normal filesystem limits. Retained jobs live in the selected drive's hidden MPSPOOL drawer.

Installing

MintPRINT ships as one drawer (MintPRINT/) containing MintPrintSettings and both driver builds under Drivers/ - Drivers/MintPRINT-V44/ for AmigaOS 3.2, 3.5, 3.9 (and later), Drivers/MintPRINT-OS31/ for the classic pre-V44 AmigaOS 2.04 through 3.1 build (see docs/OS31_SUPPORT.md).

Run MintPrintSettings - it detects which driver this machine needs from workbench.library's version, tells you what it found, and offers to install/update a missing or out-of-date DEVS:Printers/MintPRINT from the matching Drivers/ subdrawer. 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 numeric IPv4 address, IPP path, and document format in MintPrint Settings.

Prefer a classic Amiga install experience instead? Run the Install script at the top of the archive - it offers the same auto-detected driver choice (with the option to override it) through the standard AmigaOS Installer.

Supported document formats

image/jpeg, application/postscript, image/pwg-raster, application/pdf, and image/urf (Apple Raster). 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. Apple Raster (URF) covers the rarer case of a printer that accepts neither - see docs/URF_ENGINE.md.

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 (V44+ build)
make driver31  # build/driver31/MintPRINT (AmigaOS 2.04-3.1 classic build)
make release   # all three, staged into release/MintPRINT/ ready to distribute
make clean

make release stages one drawer with both driver builds under Drivers/MintPRINT-V44/ and Drivers/MintPRINT-OS31/, plus the Install script and Aminet readme next to it. See docs/OS31_SUPPORT.md for the two driver builds and mp_driver_src_path() in src/MintPrintSettings.c for how the right one gets chosen at runtime. Workbench icons for MintPrintSettings and the release drawer itself are copied in automatically from art/ if present there.

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 has multiple printers confirmed 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.

Credits

MintPRINT is by Darren Banfi (boingball), developed with assistance from Anthropic Claude.

Special thanks to Andreas Stürmer, author of AmiAirPrint, for friendly cross-project collaboration: sharing compatibility findings and pointers to relevant fixes, allowing MintPRINT's implementation to be compared against AmiAirPrint, and helping identify gaps in classic application and printer compatibility.

License

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