de@HELIOS.UCSC.EDU (De Clarke) (04/11/91)
The IIIsi sounded impressive, and we were at the end of a long unhappy experience evaluating the $20K Nissho 2248. I sent the Nissho back, after 3 months of doing their beta for them (why do I have this strange feeling of deja vu? but anyway) -- I ordered a IIIsi for evaluation. I got it with the Adobe PS chips and a total 5MB memory. OK, it doesn't do 11x17. It's only 300 dpi, but with the resolution enhancement algorithm HP uses 300 dpi looks pretty darn good. My (University) price is under $5K. -- at that price it looks very good indeed. The good news is that the sucker prints up to its rated speed, unlike the Nissho which couldn't be brought anywhere near its rated 20ppm. The IIIsi will crank out simple pages of monospaced (Courier) PS text at just about the rated 17 ppm. Print quality as with all HPs is very acceptable. Setup is a breeze, documentation is good. All in all, I'm very pleased with it. The bad news (and this won't be bad for all of you, but it's a nuisance for us) -- HP appears to be turning off interrupts during all or part of the rasterizing process. Including the internal clock. Why do I care? I care because our custom PS print spooler (which you can get from us via anon FTP if you would like it) queries the PS printer at begin and end of job for 2 quantities: pages printed, and clock. We bill users for both the page count and the number of seconds they tied up the printer. (This is for fairness, in an environment where a 1-page plot sometimes takes 15 minutes or more on an NTX). So the HP lies through its teeth and tells you it printed 56 pages in 52 seconds... oh well. I guess we can re-write the spooler. Also, our demo unit has an apparent page registration problem: the printed page image seems to be shifted to the left of center, so that characters laid down by PS near the page edge are getting their left edges shaved off. I have called the dealer (good prices, bonehead staff) and asked for a contact at HP to explain adjustment of the registration: from comments posted elsewhere in this group I tend to doubt that I'm going to get anywhere. Anyone from HP read this group? Anyone in this group have a IIIsi? I've looked in the manuals without success so far, so if you know how to adjust this, drop me a line. If you are thinking about a Nissho 2248, btw, and you feel like writing to ask me what's wrong with it, I'll be happy to tell you. It's a sad story. .............................................................................. : De Clarke, Computing Resources Mgr. UCO/Lick Observatory, UCSC : : de@helios.ucsc.edu The Regents don't often agree with me nor I with them. : : de@portal.bitnet "Praise the Net, and pass the information..." :
bin@PRIMATE.WISC.EDU (Brain in Neutral) (04/12/91)
From article <9104111904.AA07624@crayola.cs.UMD.EDU>, by de@HELIOS.UCSC.EDU (De Clarke): > Also, our demo unit has an apparent page registration problem: > the printed page image seems to be shifted to the left of > center, so that characters laid down by PS near the page edge > are getting their left edges shaved off. How close to the edge of the page does the IIISi print (i.e., what is the ImageArea)? -- Paul DuBois "The 'C' shell usually doesn't dubois@primate.wisc.edu have job control." -- LAN TIMES