Nov 28, 2025 15:27:00

Successfully convert a receipt printer into a gaming PC to play 'DOOM'

YouTube channel

Bringus Studios , which creates its own PCs and game consoles, has released a movie demonstrating its attempt to use an Epson receipt printer as a gaming PC. In this video, Bringus Studios actually plays various games, including DOOM.

Gaming on a Receipt Printer - YouTube


The device used was the Epson TM-T88V-DT model.

The TM-T88V-DT is a special product that combines a regular receipt printer with a PC equipped with an Intel Atom processor, a 500GB HDD, and 4GB of memory.

There is a sticker on the side with the Windows 7 Pro product key.

Initially, the included power adapter did not provide enough power, causing the system to crash when printing and calculating simultaneously. However, by connecting a more powerful 24V 5A power supply that I had made myself, I was able to achieve stable operation.

However, since the environment was using a 64-bit CPU limited by a 32-bit UEFI boot loader, the installation of the 64-bit version of Debian failed.

To get around the boot restriction, the poster used a hardware flashing tool to dump the BIOS, then flashed a modified version provided by an X user, successfully installing 64-bit Debian.

I was also able to install Steam.

However, due to the lack of proper drivers for the PowerVR-based integrated graphics, performance is unplayable: when running 'Half-Life,' frame rates were a staggering 2-7 FPS.

Because Intel only released graphics drivers for the Intel Atom chipset for Windows 7 32-bit, reverting to Windows 7 64-bit failed, forcing me to reinstall Windows 7 32-bit.

With the right drivers installed, performance improved dramatically, and Bringus Studios was able to get games like Team Fortress 2 and CounterStrike: GO running.

Portal can now be played at a maximum of 30 FPS at a lower resolution of 852x480, but it quickly drops to a few FPS and becomes quite choppy.

So Bringus Studios created a script in Python that captures the screen and sends it to a printer, turning the thermal paper used for receipts into a gaming monitor.

This is how the game screen is printed on the thermal paper for the receipt. Thermal printers generate heat to print black pixels, so printing dark game scenes too quickly can cause errors. To prevent this, Bringus Studios used a custom script to adjust the color of the black pixels to prevent the printer from overheating.

So I played while looking at a thermal printout of 'DOOM.' The version of DOOM I was playing was '

LZDoom ,' a fork designed to run smoothly even on low-spec PCs and older graphics cards.

The display on the receipt is simply done using a script, and the game screen is displayed as usual on a separately connected monitor.

Naturally, Bringus Studios reported some issues, such as 'it takes up to four seconds for your movements to be reflected in the printed material, so even if you open a door, you can't tell if it's open or closed,' 'a huge number of receipts come out, which is annoying,' and 'receipts continue to be printed out endlessly even after you finish the game unless you stop the script.'