laser-lovers@uw-beaver (12/26/83)
From WMARTIN@OFFICE-3 Sun Dec 25 17:05:44 1983 The following is a message I just read in and extracted from the Info-Graphics quasi-digest. I thought that it might be of interest to Laser-Lovers. I know nothing of this besides what is in the message itself, but it seems intriguing. Will Martin Extracted message: Date: Tue 20 Dec 83 11:05:28-PST From: Bill Park <PARK@SRI-AI.ARPA> Subject: Re: The Magnetic Printer: Successor to Laser Printers? Anyone interested in laser graphic printers should also look into a new printer from Cynthia Peripherals, Inc. (sorry I don't have their address handy). It uses magnetic instead of electrostatic forces to hold the toner onto the drum. The drum is a rugged magnetic metal alloy instead of the delicate, easily-scratched photoconductor used in laser printers. The image is written onto the surface of the drum as a magnetic pattern by a row of magnetic heads instead of by a laser/optical scanner system. Also, it uses only one liquid instead of two. Speed and resolution are as good as our Imagen but the contrast of the print sample they sent me is much higher (even the small type is really black!). The price is $27,000 & up for the printer. Their current brochure does not mention any interface hardware/software such as you get with an Imagen, however. Although the price seems high, there are very few moving parts and no easily-damaged parts. So, the machine may make up for it in increased uptime and in not having an expensive drum to replace every time the paper jams badly. Bill Park, SRI International ***End of extracted message***
laser-lovers@uw-beaver (01/06/84)
From Furuta@WASHINGTON.ARPA Fri Jan 6 11:58:11 1984
The following two messages apparently got lost before they made it
out to the Usenet. I'm consequently resending them.
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1) 28-Dec Crean.HENR@PARC-MAXC Re: Magnetic Printer
2) 31-Dec Charles Hedrick Re: More 9700 experience
Message 1 -- ************************
Mail-From: FURUTA created at 28-Dec-83 13:29:07
Return-Path: <Crean.HENR@PARC-MAXC.ARPA>
Received: from PARC-MAXC.ARPA by WASHINGTON.ARPA with TCP; Wed 28 Dec 83 13:06:36-PST
Date: Wed, 28 Dec 83 16:05 EST
From: Crean.HENR@PARC-MAXC.ARPA
Subject: Re: Magnetic Printer
In-reply-to: <[OFFICE-3]21-Dec-83 11:02:34.WMARTIN>
To: WMartin@Office-3.ARPA (Will Martin)
cc: Laser-Lovers@WASHINGTON.ARPA
ReSent-date: Wed 28 Dec 83 13:29:06-PST
ReSent-from: Richard Furuta <Furuta@WASHINGTON.ARPA>
ReSent-to: "Laser Lovers": ;
I can offer a bit more info on the 'Magnetic Printer'. This hardware
was developed by Honeywell-Bull in Europe and has been offered to OEMs
for the past eighteen months aggressively. The machines I saw at NCC
were fanfold. In magnetic imaging, a long head with 240 head/inch (sort
of like a giant mag tape head) writes the bit map on the drum (or tape
in the case of a GE mchine). A single component magnetic toner (powder
not liquid) brushes the drum and developes the image. Transfer to paper
and fusing is similar to a office copier.
The problems to be solved in this technology are head wear and the
tradeoff between image density and background on the copy. In the
Cynthia case, the head life is only moderate and replacement becomes a
major contributor to the running cost and service frequency. When
carefully done, magnetic imaging can make very high resolution images
but no one has been able to capitalize on its ability to make many
prints from a single magnetic image.
This machine is a real tank compared to the imagen and is aimed at the
low end of the Xerox 97/8700 and IBM 3800 market and also probably
considered as a line printer replacement. The trick in the $27000 price
is the required image generator.
Pete Crean
Xerox Corp
Message 2 -- ************************
Mail-From: FURUTA created at 31-Dec-83 19:39:37
Return-Path: <HEDRICK@RUTGERS.ARPA>
Received: from RUTGERS.ARPA by WASHINGTON.ARPA with TCP; Sat 31 Dec 83 15:58:22-PST
Date: 31 Dec 83 18:58:01 EST
From: Charles Hedrick <HEDRICK@RUTGERS.ARPA>
Subject: Re: More 9700 experience
To: BEC.SHAPIN%USC-ECL@SRI-NIC.ARPA
cc: laser-lovers@WASHINGTON.ARPA
In-Reply-To: Message from "Ted Shapin <BEC.SHAPIN%USC-ECL@SRI-NIC>" of 20 Dec 83 14:17:00 EST
ReSent-date: Sat 31 Dec 83 19:39:37-PST
ReSent-from: Richard Furuta <Furuta@WASHINGTON.ARPA>
ReSent-to: "Laser Lovers": ;
I do not understand the comment that JES is unable to pass all EBCDIC
characters. We print Scribe output files, which use metacodes. These
files are effectively binary, so the fact that they print correctly
seems to indicate that every 8-bit combination can be printed. We
use a separate forms type, since the 9700 must be started in a separate
mode. But we do not open the device directly. The precautions that
we have to take should not be applicable if you are really printing
EBCDIC, as opposed to Scribe metacodes (which are in fact internal
Xerox ASCII):
- Be careful about DCB parameters. I don't recall which we use,
but if you aren't careful, JES will add trailing blanks.
I think we use VB, with machine carriage control instead of
ANS (to cause JES to do the minimum amount of processing).
- If you are printing ASCII on the 9700, be careful of the ASCII
character that looks like an EBCDIC blank. If you end a line
with it, JES may strip it. (We add an extra trailing ASCII
blank in this case.)
- If you are printing ASCII on the 9700, do something to keep
JES from supplying burster pages, since theese will be in
EBCDIC. We have hacked JES so that a certain SYSOUT class
does not get burster pages. Under MVS/SP, JES seems to have
a user exit that would make this change very easy.
We are using MVS with JES2. We have used both MVS and MVS/SP. I
think our MVS goes back to something like 8201. Our MVS/SP is quite
recent.
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