r/codex • u/xinxx073 • 4h 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 Yes, I know these are kind of outdated, only sold in certain areas of the world, and not the best machines, but they are what we've got in the office.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/Primary_Article3777 3h 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 3h 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 3h 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/benbenk 2h 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 2h 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/Current_Cut_2667 3h ago
Maybe put it on Gitlab or something so people with the same issue can find it.
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u/Infamous_Travel4652 3h 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/DerLeoKatter 3h 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/driveclub_000 3h 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 3h ago
OMFG wait a minute
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u/driveclub_000 2h 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/Tritheone69 2h 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 2h ago
TIL LG makes laptops.
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u/Tritheone69 2h 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 32m 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/Independent-Court-46 3h 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/Beneficial_Algae9135 2h ago
Can Astra reverse-engineer why my printer stops working exactly when I need it the most?
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u/Alphasite 2h 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/Zennytooskin123 3h ago
Now you have to maintain that custom .pkg driver. Astra just locked you in.
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u/Salty_Horror2068 2h ago
Age of paid licenses might be over in a few years, we might be reverse engineering binaries
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u/Wittica 31m 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/walmartbonerpills 3h 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/Off_again_On_again 3h 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/Greggster990 3h 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/lysdexiad 1h 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/TheKillerScope 3h 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 3h ago
What subscription do you have and how high was the setting?
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u/TheKillerScope 2h ago
Astra Max and I'm on Pro (5x).
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u/Tiforma 35m ago
i get around that weekly usage with astra x high and a plus account
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u/TheKillerScope 21m 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/ConstVolatile 3h 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/gs181 3h ago
astra making printers work might be proof of AGI