laser-lovers@uw-beaver (laser-lovers) (09/15/84)
From: <hplabs!bragvax!david@Berkeley> I have discovered that the support and marketing people also get extremely bitchy when asked questions like: - why does my 8/300 randomly crash/hang every few hours? - why do 36 pt characters and other large glyphs randomly self-destruct? - if 2.1 is the first production firmware release, does that mean my $500 firmware maintenance contract doesn't start until it's delivered? - just when is 2.1 coming out anyway? - will there ever be an 8/300 manual? - why are so many fonts missing? when will the rest be converted to 300 dpi? - why does the Zurich font cost $1500 (or $2500 resident) ? - how do I build a "chartab.txt" file so I can use the (few) fonts I have with troff? - what glyphs are in the resident fonts? - why is there no case price on toner carts when HP, QMS and everybody else has one? Note that most of these questions *were* answered; it's just that they were bitchy about it. Of course, I was bitchy about asking some of these (and many other) questions. At this point I am very curious about the level of support that QMS and Talaris provide -- any comments? I would also like to hear from any and all Imagen troff/ditroff users. David DiGiacomo, BRAG Systems Inc., San Mateo CA (415) 342-3963 (...decvax!ucbvax!hplabs!bragvax!david)
laser-lovers@uw-beaver (laser-lovers) (09/16/84)
From: Mabry Tyson <Tyson@SRI-AI.ARPA> Re fonts for the Imagen 8/300. We have a 8/300 on VMS and wanted more fonts than they supplied. We also have the older Imagen-10 on a 2060, where we also have metafont. The format of the fonts supplied with the VMS Imagen software are .PXL files in various directories where the directory name indicates the size of the fonts (eg, 1000 or 1250). The way I generate new fonts is to do the following on the 2060: @MF *mag=1.0*1.5;mode=-lowres;input ams10 if I want to generate a "normal" (ie, magnification 1.0) size AMS10 font. The "lowres" mode is designed for a 200dpi font so to get to 300dpi you have to change the magnification by an addtional 1.5. To get a 5pt version of that font you would want a magnification of 0.5*1.5. We have had some problems with the software supplied through Imagen just as we've had with every other new product (by any manufacturer) that I have been associated with. I have been a bit frustrated by this but Imagen has been showing signs that they are working on it. Currently we have a recent release that crashes on files longer than about 23 pages but "we'll have a fix within a week" is what we've been told. I believe they'll try to make it close to that. Someone mentioned something about the machine not knowing when its out of whatever and starts the vertical streaking. The cartridge does have a little window on it (visible from the outside of the printing device) which shows red when the cartridge should be replaced. If you want to save money at the risk of some ruined printouts, you can keep going past this. The processor has no way of knowing when that window shows red so it can't shut off the printer (as the Imagen-10 did). By the way, I noticed that the print quality of a new cartridge was considerably better than of a cartridge where we had done the shaking trick (and cleaned the corona wires). As for "will there ever be an 8/300 manual?", we have a manual that describes the print engine and such. Our VMS system has Eunice which emulates Unix(tm). Our system hacker uses troff to generate output for the 8/300. Most of the rest of us use TEX82 or LATEX. We are still quite happy with having the 8/300, considering our level of expertise and the problems we had with the previous Versatec (an old one that Versatec didn't want to service any more) that we had as an output device on this Vax. I wish that Imagen had been as successful in quashing bugs on this machine as they had on the Imagen-10 but perhaps they'll get them solved soon so their reputation isn't hurt too much. (They have been slowed down by a facilities move, but that isn't much of an excuse.) -------
laser-lovers@uw-beaver (laser-lovers) (09/19/84)
From: anonymous-user@anonymous-host.anonymous-domain FYI, do NOT run the 8/300 processor without the side panels. We discovered (the hard way) that if you do, you will disrupt the marginally engineered air-flow inside the machine, and the image boards will overheat, resulting in sending bad signals to the print engine resulting in black streaks running vertically down the page, getting worse as the boards get hotter. An extremely bitchy lady in Imagen's hardware service group told me that they had never seen this before (which I find hard to believe), and that since I hadn't paid Imagen $300 to take the machine out out of the box in the first place, I had no right to expect it to work!! In stark contrast, the software service people are still extremely helpful, and are probably the people to consult even if you have hardware problems. --Xr. -------