dkl@pro-europa.cts.com (David Leikam) (11/11/89)
>sorry to bother you about such a trivial issue. Please bear with me. >Will a Hewlett Packard IIP Laserjet Printer work with a Mac? There's not any kind of real problem with the hardware, provided the Laserjet has a serial port/adapter installed. If not, this can be added. THen you need a serial printer cable for the Mac. This is _not_ an Imagewriter cable, and it is not a modem cable. Neither one will work. If you just can't find the right beast, settle for the modem cable, and get a nullmodem crossover adapter. That should do the trick. >If these two items talk to each other, is there anything strange about >hooking them together? Whoa! Hooking 'em together isn't the problem - getting them to speak civilly to one another is the problem. Most software for the mac does not support even the standard Epson printer commands and controls, let alone HPPCL, which is what the Laserjet wants to hear. You will need some kind of printer driver that translates, essentially, between Postscript and PCL. I understand that there is a cartridge (as in Font cartridge) available that can do this trick, but I don't know that it will work with the Laserjet - it might be proprietary to whoever manufactures it (say, for example, Qume does, and it only works on Qumes Model X laser). In this, I fear you are in unknown territory. >If you have any pearls of wisdom about this combination, please pass >them along. I do, but you won't like it: The laserjet is cheaper, off the shelf, than the Laserwriter, yes - but after you've finished paying for all those font cartridges, or softfonts and the memory to make effective use of 'em, you're not better off financially. It would be better not to fight this particular battle. It would make as much financial sense to go with a Laserwriter in the first place. ---- UUCP: {nosc, uunet!cacilj, sdcsvax, hplabs!hp-sdd, sun.com} ...!crash!pro-europa!dkl ARPA: crash!pro-europa!dkl@nosc.mil INET: dkl@pro-europa.cts.com - BITNET: pro-europa.uucp!dkl@psuvax1