[comp.sys.amiga] Canon FP-510, Color Printers

nevets@ihlpm.ATT.COM (Steven R Ringwood) (11/30/88)

I have been trying to decide on a new color printer for some time
and have some questions and also some notes on a new Canon printer.

First the questions:

1)	Has any bodyheard of/used a Canon FP-510?
	(See below for some notes on it).
	
2)	I have been primarily looking at the HP-Paintjet and the
	Xerox 4020 (and now the Canon FP-510).  What I want is
	a printer there produces good quality and color.
	(I currently am using a JX-80).  My price range
	is $1000 - $2000.  Any suggustions on a printer.
	
3)	If i decide on the Canon FP-510, does anyone know
	of a printer driver (1.3) for it?.
	How would I make one, or is there some one out there
	who will do it?

Now the Canon FP-510

	It sounds like a nice printer and sounds like it should
	work well with the Amiga. If I understood the
	price right it retails at $1500.
	I plan to check it out this Friday if I can find one in the area.
	
	The following information comes from Canon and is
	reproduced without permission.
	
	160 Pixels per inch, with 64-step Gradation
	The Remarkable Super High Resolution Image Printer
	FULL COLLOR PRINTER		 FP-510
	
	.. auto-capping mechanism ...
	
	RGB, CMY, color paller, or B/W modes can be selected
	as image data ....
	
	Gradation has been improved by providing cyan and magenta
	colors in three types of ink differentiated by density:
	thick, medium and light.
	
	The FP-510 achieves high-density images and abundant
	gradations by using analog modulation through dot
	diameter variation and by light and dark ink.
	
	Drop-on-demand type ink-jet printing
	
	Color representation: 260,000-color: 2-color, 4-color,
				16-color, 256-color (pallet)
				
	.. Centronics type (interface) ...

======================================================================

Thanks in advance for any information

	Steven Ringwood, ihlpm!nevets, (312)-979-5161

muzak@vax1.acs.udel.EDU (Stephen F Felicetti) (12/01/88)

In article <2638@ihlpm.ATT.COM> nevets@ihlpm.ATT.COM (Steven R Ringwood) writes:
>I have been trying to decide on a new color printer for some time
>and have some questions and also some notes on a new Canon printer.
>
>1)	Has any bodyheard of/used a Canon FP-510?
I've heard about it, but that's about all.  
I just bought an HP-PaintJet for my amiga in September and I am VERY
SATISFIED with it -- I took it right out of the box, connected it
to the computer, selected the 1.3 PaintJet driver, and proceeded to print
out a nice HAM (4096 color) image from a Sculpt-3D animation using GRABBIT --
it came out BEAUTIFULLY (and fairly quickly)!
I then, of course, began madly printing screens from all my games just to
see how they would turn out -- and they all printed wonderfully!  (One thing
I DID notice right away, however, was that the blues were coming out 
relatively darker than the other colors; this could be lessened by color-
correcting the blues from the preferences screen, but they still remained
slightly darker than they should have been.  Otherwise, the PaintJet produced
an EXACT replica of the screen on paper.)
By the way, the 1.3 driver uses the PaintJet's 180 dpi mode, but performs 
dithering in 2x2 'blocks' of pixels in order to properly reproduce the
amiga's colors, resulting in an effective resolution of 90 dpi.  Needless to
say, it still does a fine job despite the slight loss of resolution.  The
1.3 driver is obviously well-written overall, and printing amiga fonts with
anti-aliasing yields excellent results.
>	(I currently am using a JX-80).  My price range
>	is $1000 - $2000.  Any suggustions on a printer.
I bought my PaintJet (new) for $800, but that was through my university
computer store (i.e. greatly discounted).  I believe it normally sells for
around $1100 (?). 
>3)	If i decide on the Canon FP-510, does anyone know
>	of a printer driver (1.3) for it?.
I don't know myself, but if there isn't currently a driver for the Canon,
you *may* be able to find a PD driver for it.  (I'll let you know if I
encounter one.)

                  [Canon printer specs deleted.]

Overall, you can probably tell that I'm very pleased with my PaintJet.  800
bucks was a lot of money for me to spend on a printer, but I don't regret it
one bit!

Oh...I almost forgot: I don't know whether the Canon requires special paper,
but with PaintJet, you'll do best using HP's special paper.  I wasn't sure
whether I'd want to spend the extra money for their 'special' paper, but
I was so pleased with the quality (NO smearing, DEEP colors, blacks are *BLACK*)
that I don't mind the extra expense.  (I've even had people comment on the
paper's overall 'neat' look and texture, wondering what brand of paper I was
using!)  And, of course, you can always keep a stack of cheepo, run-of-the-mill
fan-fold paper for printouts in which quality isn't important (text prints
a bit lighter and somewhat 'fuzzy,' but the quality varies quite a bit
depending on the paper's thickness, texture, etc.)

Hope this information (read: plug for the PaintJet! ;-) helps!

me128-aw@kepler.Berkeley.EDU (me128 student) (12/10/88)

In article <2424@udccvax1.acs.udel.EDU> muzak@vax1.acs.udel.EDU (Stephen F Felicetti) writes:

>I was so pleased with the quality (NO smearing, DEEP colors, blacks are *BLACK*)
>that I don't mind the extra expense.  (I've even had people comment on the
...

Never mind the special paper, what about the Ink Cartridges!  
I too paid $800 for a paintjet responding to an ad in the paper.  Turns out
it was a "demo" model from HP that was never really used.

I love the printer, but the ink cartridges contain the piezo print elements
on it.  End result:  You never have to worry about burning out or cleaning
the print head b/c you do replace it with the ink.  Unfortunately, it also
means it costs $34.95 for a color cartridge and 29.95 for a b/w!!!

I've been trying to refill my cartridges, but with limited success.  I drill
holes in the tops of empty cartridges and fill them with Dr. PH Martins
watercolors (magenta, turquoise, lemmon yellow, black).  The colors match
EXACTLY, but the cartridges only work intermittently.  Maybe the watercolors
are clogging the nozzles.  Anyway, it works sometimes, but I need to find out
how to stop the clogging.  The good thing is, of course, that there's nothing
to lose.  If the nozzles clog permanently, you haven't lost anything.

-Vincent H. Lee

ncreed@ndsuvax.UUCP (W. Reed) (12/12/88)

In article <27086@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> me128-aw@kepler.Berkeley.EDU (me128 student) writes:
>In article <2424@udccvax1.acs.udel.EDU> muzak@vax1.acs.udel.EDU (Stephen F Felicetti) writes:
>>I was so pleased with the quality (NO smearing, DEEP colors, blacks are *BLACK*)
>>that I don't mind the extra expense.  (I've even had people comment on the
>....
>Never mind the special paper, what about the Ink Cartridges!
>means it costs $34.95 for a color cartridge and 29.95 for a b/w!!!
>I've been trying to refill my cartridges, but with limited success.  I drill

Ok, I don't have THAT printer, but I did have an HP ThinkJet (Black only.)

What I did, was save up a couple of old ink cartridges and take a syringe
and pull all the extra ink out of the spent cartridges (it never was all gone)
and inject them into Yet Another spent cartridge.  This worked very well, and
3 spent cartridges gave me one full cartridge that had more ink than a new one.
These cartridges had plastic bags inside the clear plastic shell.
There wasn't any pressure in the bags, so they didn't leak.

Hope this can save someone a few bucks...

--
------  Walter Reed  ------   + uunet!ndsuvax!ncreed or ncreed@ndsuvax.BITNET
"There's no point in being    +      or ncreed@plains.NoDak.edu
 grown up if you can't be     +
 childish sometimes!" Dr. Who + USnAIL: 925 9th Ave W.  West Fargo, ND 58078