Which Laser Printer?
8 messages in this thread
John,
I've got my Amiga and Mac hooked up to a brand new QMS-PS 410 and I
really like it. It's not as quiet as my DeskJet Plus, but … 🙂
Just found out that a Mac program called "Smart Art" won't work with it
(sigh). Smart Art needs a subset of Postscript called "bitsback" and non
of the new printers have that. If you are interested in running that
program (on your Mac) you may want to look at an old (slightly) Postscript
printer.
In terms of handling my Amiga and Mac together, I've had no problems at
all. Only joys so far (outside of Smart Art).
Hope that helps…
Oh… the 410 has 1 serial, 1 parallel and 1 Apple interface. So, you
would have to deal with that in order to hook all three (IBM, Mac, Amiga).
You might want to consider extra memory so that you can increase its input
buffer memory to hold jobs from all three simultaniously (comes standard
with 2 megs).
Regards,
Allen
I've never heard of "bitsback", and it's not in the Adobe Red Book. Don't
know what you're talking about.
John,
BitsBack is a strange bird. You send PS to the printer serially, it
interprets the PS, and sends the raster bits back to the computer! Your
program can then put the result of your PS onscreen. I believe it's in old
Apple LaserWriters (and probably nowhere else).
Malcolm
From the name, that's what I guessed it would do. 🙂 I don't plan on
relying on non-standard-isms like that. Not that I wouldn't love to hear
about such a creature; I know I once tried to find a way to do just that.
John,
I think bitsback was probably there initially when Macs had much less
memory than they do today. Now most folks have enough memory for a PS
interpreter and a buffer. It makes more sense to do it that way (according
to the guy in the next cubicle who wants to use the printer). 🙂
Malcolm
I'm surprised to hear of it – I always thought that if Don Lancaster hadn't
heard of it, then it couldn't exist, and I don't remember him ever talking
about this technique.
John,
I think I saw mention made of it on Adobe forum. But its absence from the
Red Book is evidence of how uncommon it is. Just a little something hidden
away for old Mac/LW users. SmartArt may be the only application that uses
it.
Malcolm
John,
Apparantly, 'bitsback' was a command that left out of the current adobe
protocol. I've only encountered one program that requires its use (Smart
Art for the Mac). Everything seems to run very well and I'm very happy
with the QMS-PS 410.
Regards,
Allen