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#Amiga & Mac Printer

6 messages in this thread

#209773From: jeff kisseloffAug 26, 1995 4:58 PM

I'm splitting my time between my Amiga 3000 and a Mac these days. I use the AMiga for ProPage, wehich prints out Postscript file. I just got a Mac Laserwriter, which is a PS printer. WIll the AMiga print to it? I know it has a serial connection in the back, and another one, which is not the standard parallel connection that my Laser Jet had. thanks for any help.

#209815From: Lieven LemaAug 27, 1995 3:13 AM

Jeff, you can print postscript to a file, transfer these to the Mac and print them from there. A nice thing about postscript is that it's the same on all platforms. . – Lieven Lema

#209836From: jeff kisseloffAug 27, 1995 10:37 AM

Hmmm, thanks for responding, but does that mean I cannot connect the Mac printer directly to my Amiga, let's say serial to serial? And if I do print to a file, I assume that would have to go out on a floppy, which would create problems since I am dealing with a 64-page magazine, lots of floppies. Any ideas? thanks again, jeff

#209934From: Lieven LemaAug 28, 1995 2:12 AM

Jeff, serial to serial might work, but I've read that apple-printers are somewhat different than we know on the amiga-platform. Postscript is postscript, sure enough, but there must be some handshaking between the printer and the computer. Apple's have Appletalk instead of centronics interfaces, should your printer have this, then there will be no problem on the Mac, but the Amiga needs centronics. I printed 2 pricelists for work, both 24 pages, that took about 10 HD floppies. A 64 page magazine with lots of graphics can easily become 100 meg. There's really just one solution, networking, but you'll need some stuff on the Amiga (ethernetcard) and on the Mac. Sorry, no other obvious solution comes to mind but floppies…:-( . – Lieven Lema

#209945From: jeff kisseloffAug 28, 1995 8:51 AM

Lieven, I'll try a serial cable today. If it works, great, if not I'll just keep my old LaserJet around and plug it in when I need it. Thanks for the info. jeff

#210219From: Nick CookAug 30, 1995 10:10 PM

Lieven: I had an ancient Apple LaserWriter connected to my A2000 via the serial port (for PostScript output). 1. You need a null modem cable. 2. Serial port out of the Amiga 3. Set the Amiga's serial prefs: Xon/Xoff; No Parity; 9600, 8bits/char; 1 stop bit. I don't have the LaserWriter any more (I use the TI microwriter), but if memory serves, the above steps should do it.