alex@grian.UUCP (Alex Pournelle) (01/24/90)
> We currently are using a Xerox 2700 laser printer. We need to > find a comparable replacement printer which will support "troff" > at 20-30ppm. There's nothing like simultaneous spontaneous synchronicity, and this is definitely a case! Just this Saturday, I proudly *bought* a Xerox 2700 II (which may be a different beast, but I suspect not radically so) for an unrefuseable price. Silly me, I dragged the thing off to work and called Xorex. Well, after talking to 11 people in 9 different offices (at least Xeroids are helpful!) I have one basic question: does anyone know how to make this thing useful to general human beings? I'd like to publish my desktop from it, preferably from both PC and Mac. What follows is a short summary of what I've found so far, which you can press "n" to blow by if you like. But, please, any and all info on this beastie (beyond what's here) is welcome. Post or mail? Well, shux, if two people have the same kinda problem, then maybe *3* do! Alex Hmm, well, I opened 'er up, and it's got an 8086, an 8089, a Centronics/parallel port and some memory, plus a font rack (with XCP 14--ugh, your basic utility print-out font) that can be locked. And only 10,000 impressions (!), which is nothing for this box. After some discussions with a Xeroid-friend (who happens to be writing an emulator for this particular printer--will wonders never cease!), I've found that it uses "UDK", User-Definable Kommands, which are neither fish, flesh, Terence nor interPRESS compatible. No, it's another, incompatibobble, Xerox "standard" command set, pretty easy to use if you can type in ASCII but not what I bought this beastie for. Obviously, I'd like to PostScript or the like with it--a 24-page engine is a hard thing to waste--and I know that QMS has/had a PS box for the 2400, which at least is within hand-grenade range of this 'un. (I have my local QMS salesman checking for me, and The Printer Works has nothing applicable.) So, the options as I see them: --Only use a certain DTP program which may soon support this particular command set. --Find a "Freedom Of The Press" or UltraScript for it (which would require more memory; anyone know about adding RAM?) --Find a board-replacement set for it; one's available for the 2400 and 3700, why not the 2700? --Hack my own driver for it (sure, and do YOU have the time?) --Give it up as a bad job, which I really don't want to do. I am quite open to suggestions, 'cuz this is a real workhorse of an engine. Visions of 20 PS pages a minute are tantalizingly close... Avidly, Alex
russ@wpg.com (Russell Lawrence) (02/09/90)
In article <9002072153.AA21380@crayola.cs.UMD.EDU>, Alex Pournelle writes: > > We currently are using a Xerox 2700 laser printer. We need to > > find a comparable replacement printer which will support "troff" > > at 20-30ppm. > > There's nothing like simultaneous spontaneous synchronicity, and this is > definitely a case! > > Just this Saturday, I proudly *bought* a Xerox 2700 II (which may be a > different beast, but I suspect not radically so) for an unrefuseable > price. Silly me, I dragged the thing off to work and called Xorex. ... Some really nice people gave me a 2700 about a year ago, and after getting it cleaned up, I really fell in love with it. In fact, I'm looking to get another one for my non-profit corporation if somebody has one available for sale (cheap). If you'd like to run troff on a 2700, contact Image Network, 140 South Wisman Rd., Mountain View, CA 94041 415/967-0652. They have a troff port called 'xroff' that works great with 2700's. -- Russell Lawrence, WP Group, New Orleans (504) 443-5000 russ@wpg.com uunet!wpg!russ
esf00@uts.amdahl.com (Elliott S. Frank) (02/09/90)
In article <9002072153.AA21380@crayola.cs.UMD.EDU> alex@grian.UUCP (Alex Pournelle) writes: > > I have one basic question: does anyone know how to >make this thing useful to general human beings? I'd like to publish my >desktop from it, preferably from both PC and Mac. Ummmmmm .... we've got one of those beasties banging away in the corner, and its only got two and a half million prints on it. The software is wearing out, though. In 1982 the only game in town was a [di]roff back end ["Xroff"] from Image Networks (address available in the box ads in the back of _Un*x Today_). I suspect that if you want to use soft fonts without any software hacking, you're probably still in that boat. I'd suggest tracking down the Ghostscript source -- it's possible to tell the marking engine where (other than your hands, shirt, etc:-)) you would like it to deposit toner. I've got no good idea as to the scale of the hack involved, but xroff seemed to be straighforward. -- Elliott Frank ...!{hplabs,ames,sun}!amdahl!esf00 (408) 746-6384 or ....!{bnrmtv,drivax,hoptoad}!amdahl!esf00 [the above opinions are strictly mine, if anyone's.] [the above signature may or may not be repeated, depending upon some inscrutable property of the mailer-of-the-week.]