CompuServe Thread

Hi, Sorry to interupt someone else's message, but it seems like Pat is echoing my question (I just bought a DeskJet 500C 2 days ago). The DeskJet driver with WB 2.0 works okay with the black cartridge, but when using the color cartridge the "change cartridge" light blinks. I tried calling Commodore's "Gold Service" "support" line, who said it was up to HP to write/supply the new driver. Okay…. This morning I called HP Personal Peripherals Assist, who sounded a lot like Bob's Country Bunker from the Blues Brothers (we support BOTH kinds of computers – PC AND Mac). They said Commodore wrote the existing printer drivers… So I called the Gold Service line aagain & got the same answer… So I called HP, waited on hold 20 mminutes, found someone who knew of the Amiga, but knew of no plans for HP to be developing a driver for the 500C… The HP guy did mention a company called Creative Focus, and they were helpful, knew what Amigas are, and are planning on developing a printer driver to support the DeskJet 500C in COLOR (certain Amiga paint programs utilize different colors, besides black,grey, and white). My gripe is not that a driver is not currently available, it is that 1) both companies' help desk people were eager to shift the problem back to the other vendor (and consequently,to me) 2) as a recent buyer of thousands of dollars of these guys' stuff, I felt I deserved a bit more consideration, 3) on the first call to HP, I had to explain a couple of times that I didn't need either the MS-DOS or Windows disks… Well, I'll close out my Marketing 101 lecture by leaving the address of Creative Focus: P.O.Box 580 Chenango Bridge, NY 13745-0580 (607)648-4082 (I don't have any affiliation with the company – it simply seems like the only vendor with a color driver). Craig Stenseth 72117,376

Pat, some news re the HP DJ500-C printer. I'm not associated with HP, but thought that I'd give you first impressions: The DJ500-C (color) is fully compatible with any of the older DJ or DJ500 drivers. They function identically in b&w mode. You *CAN* use any HP Paintjet driver with the DJ500-C, and it *WILL* work. You'd still need to color correct your drawings for the most part to get them to look correct. I see two main problems right now: 1) the PJ is a 180dpi printer. It can print 1,860 dots on each horizontal line (across the paper). The DJ500-C is a 300dpi printer. It can print 3,100 dots across the paper. Since the PJ driver limits each line to a max of 1,860 dots, the absolute largest printout you'll get from the DJ500-C will be 1,860 dots, since it is (in effect) emulating the PJ. All your printouts will be about 60% the size you would 'expect' (ie. if you specified a 6" wide printout from Preferences, you would actually get a printout about 3.6" wide – 60% – make sense?) The largest printout you can get is approx 60% page width (unlike the PJ where you can go all the way across). That's the 'size' limitation with the PJ driver. 2) The DJ500-C has better color rendering capability than the PJ (according to the docs), so that a driver that really uses it well should be able to further improve the image (even over the resolution increase). That will have to wait for a good, real DJ500-C driver. I am looking as I type at a 5.5" x 6" color printout of a FractalPro Mandelbrot image that just came out of the DJ500-C, via the PJ driver (printed from within DPaintIV). Looks pretty good, but the colors are darker. I'd need to lighten up the image (particularly the blues and greens) to make it look better. There is *no* noticable banding, the color blending is real nice, the small dither patterns are much better than the relatively coarse PJ's, colors are pretty vibrant (and this is only on copier paper!). All in all a very nice printout. Like I said, I [ MORE ]

[ continuation ] know it can do better… time to experiment. Anyway, thought that I'd give you my 2c worth on the DJ500-C and the Amiga. First report! It's not perfect, but it is useful already (via the PJ color driver and regular DJ drivers) –jp–seattle–