arenberg@trwrb.UUCP (Jeff Arenberg) (12/09/87)
This past weekend I finally got the C/Mac/GS printer interface from Orange Micro. This nice little device lets you connect just about any parallel dot matrix printer to a //c, //GS, or Mac and make that printer work like an Imagewriter. In the box you get a small ac/dc transformer for power, a short cable for converting to the newer 8 pin DIN connector (as opposed to the older Mac connector which is on the end of the main cable) and the main cable which has the intellegence build into a small box that has the Centronics parallel connector on one end. Your printer type is set in four dip switches. Software is provided for a //c and //GS. On the GS, this constitutes a CDA for selecting the printer type and the screen to print. You can dump either or both text pages, hi-res, double hi-res or super hi-res screens in various aspect ratios. Color printing is also supported. The manual is short and a few things aren't explained too well (like the different aspect ratios) but otherwise it is sufficient. The Print Manager on the GS does a particularly good job of printing in grey scale. Upto nine different shades are approximated by bitmap patterns that fool the eye into thinking you see levels of grey. I have the APDA sample disk set for the GS that has about a dozen digitized pictures and they printed suprisingly well. If you have a parallel printer and want to use it, I strongly recommend this product. ** Usually disclaimer, no affiliation with Orange Micro just a happy customer, etc. ** Jeff Arenberg ------------------------------------------------------------ UUCP : ( ucbvax, ihnp4, uscvax ) !trwrb!trwcsed!arenberg ARPA : jarenberg@ecla.usc.edu GEnie: shifty ------------------------------------------------------------