JWMANLY@AMHERST.BITNET (John W Manly) (05/06/88)
Hi, all. Quick question to all those people who have purchased DEC's
PRINTSERVER 40s. (LPS40s).
How do you like this printer? I have heard that it really can do 40 pages per
minute of postscript output, is this true? How fast is it with ANSI text that
needs host translation?
We are a college environment, so the really important question for us is
HOW IS THE RELIABILITY? At 40 pages/minute, that engine must be just flying.
Does it hold together under continuous printing?
We need to make our decisions fairly quickly, so any advice anyone has would
be greately appreciated. Please send to me directly since I am no longer on
this list.
BITNET: JWMANLY@AMHERST - John W. Manly
PHONE: (413)-542-2526 System Manager
Amherst Collegentitley@axion.bt.co.uk (Vache qui rit) (05/18/88)
I've posted this because people may be interested in our experiences with our printserver 40. I understand they are not atypical. From article <8805130511.AA12410@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>, by JWMANLY@AMHERST.BITNET (John W Manly): > > Hi, all. Quick question to all those people who have purchased DEC's > PRINTSERVER 40s. (LPS40s). > > How do you like this printer? I have heard that it really can do 40 pages per > minute of postscript output, is this true? How fast is it with ANSI text that > needs host translation? We've had ours for 3 - 4 months now and are reasonably happy with it. It prints plain text at a tremendous rate of knots, postscript (such as LaTeX output) almost as fast, but the rate does strongly depend on the page complexity. The most annoying feature is the job setup time. It seems to take 15 - 30 seconds in between accepting a job and starting to print anything. This makes it very slow when you have a lot of little jobs, and using the /COPIES option on PRINT has this overhead on every copy. Using the PARAMETER=(PAGE_COUNT=nn) option gets over this by printing each page nn times (at full 40 pages per minute) but of course your output is uncollated. > > We are a college environment, so the really important question for us is > HOW IS THE RELIABILITY? At 40 pages/minute, that engine must be just flying. > Does it hold together under continuous printing? Initially the reliability was appalling. We had an informal sweepstake running on how long the printer would stay up. Average was less than 3 days. Things were tracked down to operator error in the end. It is vitally important to: 1. Stack paper in the input tray dead straight, or you get a paper jam, which leads to 2. Users trying to unjam the printer themselves and damaging some rather delicate takeoff pawls which then gouge holes in the fusing pressure roller. 3. Great care must be taken to replenish toner etc very carefully otherwise it is possible to install the cartridges incorrectly which can result in toner all over the inside of the machine (and your copies). There is also a bug in the firmware on later versions of the DEQNA which causes problems in the initial S/W download. This can be fixed by swapping the DEQNA for an old one (we used one from one of our microvaxen). DEC should have the details. The problem only manifests itself on `busy' ethernets (ours runs at 5-10% average load). All the above caveats notwithstanding, we are now quite happy with it. It seems to run quite uncomplainingly for long periods of time, printing roughly 30,000 copies a month. Providing you treat it right it is very robust. > > We need to make our decisions fairly quickly, so any advice anyone has would > be greately appreciated. Please send to me directly since I am no longer on > this list. > > BITNET: JWMANLY@AMHERST - John W. Manly > PHONE: (413)-542-2526 System Manager > Amherst College Email: NTitley@axion.bt.co.uk Snail: British Telecom Research labs, Martlesham Heath, Ipswich, Suffolk, UK "I do not care what happens now: I have seen dragons on the wings of morning"