wan@gatech.UUCP (10/31/83)
Many thanks to the people who responded to my query. To refresh your
memory, I had posted an article some time ago asking about information
concerning line printers for the IBM PC. The graphics printer and other
matrix printers available are simply not fast enough for the application
that a friend of mine was thinking of (printing class and room schedules
for a pretty large high school). Letter quality is not a concern at all
here, just throughput and speed.
Five people responded to my query. Recommendations for printers included
the Printronix P300 and P600 (300- and 600-LPM, respectively), the TTY 40
printer (running on the respondent's Apple with a serial interface), the
Datasouth printer (no particular model number), the Dataproducts printer
(running at 600-LPM), the DEC LA series (120 and 180) printers, and the
Centronics series printers. Although the Printronix printers were described
as reliable and of good quality, one respondent felt that they were a little
overpriced; I will address this point later. Although the TTY 40 comes with
a serial interface, a parallel interface can be purchased for it. The
respondent using the TTY 40 reports only one service call in seven years, but
I am not sure what kind of duty cycle he was talking about. The Dataproducts
printer runs over an RS-232 interface, but the respondent was running on a
VAX and not a PC; I think that the PC should be able to drive it fairly
easily, though. The respondent who suggested Centronics and Centronics-type
printers had one caveat to pass on: some printers which use the Centronics
interface put strange voltages on the "unused" pins in the connector, so it
would be wise to check that out before plugging the printer in (otherwise,
you could burn out your printer and/or computer).
One suggestion that I got was to find the issue of the "Mini-Micro Systems"
magazine which had the printer review in it; I happen to subscribe to that
magazine (but had forgotten about its product reviews, unfortunately), and
found the most recent "Peripherals Digest" (Spring, 1983). In the section
that talks about printers, they have a breakdown of serial, matrix, and
line printers (the latter is the one that I am mainly interested in). In
addition to listing the manufacturers, etc., they also provide a tutorial
section on how to buy printers; i.e., what to look for, how to calculate the
cost of ownership, etc. Part of the manufacturer's listings include price;
the price for the Printronix line of printers didn't seem to be out of line
at all with respect to some of other ones. Among the manufacturers of line
printers that are listed are the BDS Corporation, C. Itoh Electronics, Inc.,
Centronics (all >$10K), Dataproducts Corporation, IBM (laser printer), NEC
Information systems, Printronix, Teletype, and Xerox.
--
Peter N Wan
MAIL : School of ICS, Georgia Tech, Atlanta, Georgia 30332
BELL : (404) 894-3658 [office] / (404) 894-3152 [messages]
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