andy@icom.UUCP (Andrew H. Marrinson at Icom Systems, Inc.) (10/21/86)
We just purchased a Quadram laser printer and I thought people would be interested in what this new low-cost printer is like. It sells for around $4K (I think, we got ours for much less). It uses the new Ricoh engine, and comes with some software to drive it with your (sigh) IBM-PC. To make matters worse (since I was connecting it to a Vax, not a PC), the documentation is skimpy at best. It has 1.5M of RAM (which was quickly upgraded to 2M in-house by filling the sockets provided, a procedure which is documented). You probably know about the Ricoh engine, but in case you don't here is some information on it. It is a 300dpi engine like the Canon. It can print at 12ppm (and the Quadram does indeed seem to drive it this fast with text). Unlike the Canon, it spits the paper out upside down resulting in output that is collated correctly. Also, the OPC is not replaced with the toner as in the Canon engine. As far as software, they give you a font editor, a printer setup program and some silly little "send an escape sequence" programs for the IBM. We also got a program called FormTools also, for the PC that appeared to be for printing things like P.O.'s to be xeroxed. Except for the font editor (if you have PCs around), none of this stuff is useful to a Vax owner. It looks acceptable for PC users however. The software in the Quadram is minimal too. It has Qume emulation mode, Epson emulation mode, and downloaded emulation mode. You are always in one of these modes. To whichever download mode you are in (except possibly download) they add some escape sequences to do simple things like move to a specific dot, turn switch to landscape mode, etc. You can select three fonts normal, bold, and ribbon which are selected by the appropriate Qume or Epson escape sequences. There is also downloadable code to emulate an HP Laserjet. I have not tried this yet as I do not have any software for an HP and my friend who has one has misplaced the manual. We have stuck to Qume mode and are using it as a line printer right now. It works dandy for this. Now to the fonts. there are two fonts in ROM, plus eight on floppy. They give you a complete set of ten point courier (normal bold and italic, ok so no bold italic, and the italic leaves a lot to be desired). They also provide what they call the spreadsheet font which is a tiny thing intended for printing huge spreadsheets. We use this for 132 column output in landscape mode and it works well. The same fonts are provided in HP format for use with the Laserjet emulation. There are also discs available containing twelve other fonts. The output is indistinguishable from that produced by a Canon. In general I am fairly pleased with the Quadram. I have only been able to get 65 lines per page with the ten point fonts which is a minor annoyance. Also, some of the escape sequences seem to use a line or even a page. The software is nothing to write home about and not especially useful for non-PC users, but the appropriate software for use as a line printer was easy (thanks in large part to system V print spooling). The fonts are a problem I am working on (by converting TeX fonts). I guess I will really see how well I like this thing when I try to write a ditroff driver for it. We are also hoping to write our own downloaded emulation code for it. It uses a Z8001 and they do provide some info on writing code for it. So far it has provided its share of frustrations, but it is serving well as a line printer and hopefully soon ditroff will be talking to it, and then who knows...