#Laser Printers
7 messages in this thread
Are there any new rumors about the Commodore laser printer?
Thank you in advance for any help you can provide.
Matt Matosky (71450,1670) Help! I've brought my Amiga 2000 to my newly
opened business and have decided to get a laser printer for Desktop
Publishing and correspond ence and other reporting needs. My problem is with
which standard printer emulation should I go with? HP+ or Postscript. This
seems to be a simple matter if costs were no object, or if one was clearly
better than the other for all things, but it seems to be two very applicable
uses.
First, will the HP give me good "screen dump" graphics, which is what many WP
programs are giving these days, as well as Notepad and page graphics
printouts. If an HP will only give me the resolution of an Epson bit mapped
graphics dump without the thin white scan lines in the printout, clearly it
isn't worth the money! But, if the printout is more exacting and crisp,
that's a different story.
Second, what about Postscript. I've heard rumors of a Postscript printer
driver for the Amiga Preferences, but I don't know about the quality of its
output. Also, I have also heard of a company (Phoenix, the IBM ROM people?)
that is working on a Postscript ROM that will match Adobe's without the high
licensing fees. Should I wait for such a product? Any news on that?
Clearly the ultimate solution would be for a printer that emulates both- a la
the NEC 890. But typically these cost too much. I hope someone out there
can help me out, it seems Commodore is no help, I've called and they said HP
or Postscript – No Kidding! (continued)
Matt:
After much research, I purchased a Hewlitt-Packard LaserJett Series II today.
Honestly, I've been as happy with very few purchases…
Despite what the moron salesman at J+R, here in downtown Manhattan, said, it
does beautiful raster graphics without any expansion RAM (comes with .5MB).
Much, much cleaner, crisper and clearer than my Toshiba 24 pin printer. The
internal fonts that the printer comes with are the best I've ever seen.
I must say that the graphics printing is insanely slow. However, I
understand that the iminently-to-be-released Workbench V1.3 includes a much
faster driver.
And, as slow as the graphics are, the text is as fast. In fact, just to work
the machine out, this entire session online has been conducted with printer
output on, with _NO_ appreciable delay in response.
With time and practice and perhaps an add-on or two such as a font cartridge,
Soft Fonts, RAM expansion or new software, I feel confident that this machine
will fill my needs for a very long time.
Roger
Roger,
I've been looking at that particular printer too, could you give us an idea
of the cost of purchasing one in Manhattan?
Below you in Slower Delaware,
Chris
Chris:
The list price, according to the review this month in Online Today, is
$2,595. ComputerLand across the street from me was selling it for $1,750.
And this ain't no discount operation. A bit further downtown yielded prices
in $1,700 range.
All the way down to Park Row, near City Hall, J+R Computer World (not to be
confused with the J+R Jazz, Portable Electronics, Office Machine or Music
Worlds nearby) had the rock-price of $1,599.95 with Toner Cartridge.
Roger
Roger, I've had the HP Series II for about eight months now, and I totally
satisfied with it. I've got a special card for it which makes it connect to
3 computers at the same time, and that way it is almost the same cost as
three LQ printers.
Khalid.
P.S. If you have any questions about the printer, please don't hesitate to
ask. I am sure you will enjoy it.
Khalid:
I'm interested in this card you have. Does it install inside the printer or
the Amiga? And it has two extra parallel ports? And it does intelligent
switching? That would be great for me!
How much memory do you have on the printer? How much is enough to do
full-page 300 dpi graphics? How much for lower resolutions? Does the
Draft/Letter Quality switch in Preferences have any effect on the density
used by the driver? Are there anythings you _can't_ do with it that you want
to?
Thanks in advance.
Roger
Roger, the card plugs into the back of the printer, right next to the serial
port. It has three inputs, all SERIAL (sorry, no parallel) and it comes with
three very long cables with RS232 connectors. The card has a large buffer on
board (minimum 256k, I think) and does intelligent switching, the first
computer that accesses it gets its job done first, although the other jobs
just get stored into the card's memory until it gets either a reset command
from the current job, or if it doesn't get any more data from it for 10
seconds. In that case it just sends a form feed to the printer, and goes
ahead with the next job waiting.
In practice it works very well. And I have got it running off two amigas and
an IBM PC without a problem.
I have got the base 512k memory in the printer, and they are NOT enough for
full page 300 dpi graphics, you would need at least 1.5 megs for that. At
lower resolutions, it has no problems with .5 meg. The draft/lq switch in
Preferences does nothing, but that is a function of the driver used, and
could be changed. I'm not sure about the graphics density though. I'll
check it out.
The major shortcoming right now is the speed of transfer from the Amiga to
the printer (actually the lack of it). I have written a program some time
ago for printing on the LaserJet specifically, and it bypasses the normal
Prefernces. It runs much faster than the normal driver in text output. Maybe
you would like to have a look at it. Check out LJ2.ARC in DL11.
If you need the name of the card and the company's address, just tell me and
I'll check it out. (It can't be seen from the printer.)
Khalid.