trw@hrc63.co.UK (Trevor Wright Marconi Baddow) (04/29/87)
I am interested in a 'site' laser printer such as the Printserver-40, can
existing or other interested users put me straight on:
- does the MicroVAX run VMS or Ultrix
- can we get at it via TCP/IP and /or DECnet
- does it have the same font collection as the LaserWriter at least
- how do the economics compare with traditional lineprinters eg
DataProducts 2260-type
- what reaction do you get from users used to fanfold music-paper
when you move to cut A4 or whatever
- how does the advertised '40 pages/min' match up to reality
- what sort of additional load is placed on the Ethernet
- what host s/w is available or are you using successfully
Thanks...TREVOR WRIGHT
GEC Research
yc23%uk.co.gec-mrc.a@ucl-csjtkohl@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (John T Kohl) (05/05/87)
I would have mailed this response, but the Internet domain name servers have never heard of hrc63.co.uk, and it might be of interest to more people anyway. See a forthcoming followup for even more details. In article <113@hrc63.co.uk> Trevor Wright writes: > >I am interested in a 'site' laser printer such as the Printserver-40, can >existing or other interested users put me straight on: MIT Project Athena has been using an LPS-40 for about a month now. It took us a while to get it working under ULTRIX, but we finally kludged it. > - does the MicroVAX run VMS or Ultrix neither. It runs VAXELN, an operating system with low overhead intended for diskless operations. > - can we get at it via TCP/IP and /or DECnet Currently only via DECNET. > - does it have the same font collection as the LaserWriter at least Yes, it has a few more. It has the same font collection as the LN03R: Courier (& bold, italic, bold italic) Times (") Helvetica New Century Schoolbook Souvenir Avant Garde Lubalin Graph Symbol > - how do the economics compare with traditional lineprinters eg > DataProducts 2260-type I don't really know, we got it with "phunny money" from a DEC grant. > - what reaction do you get from users used to fanfold music-paper > when you move to cut A4 or whatever We have used cut-sheet printers since we came into existence. > - how does the advertised '40 pages/min' match up to reality For straight text printing (such as Scribe generated files) it really does run that fast. More computationally intensive things take longer, of course, but the PostScript interpreter uses the VAX floating point, and consequently runs considerably faster than 68000-based interpreters (like the LW). > - what sort of additional load is placed on the Ethernet Not noticeable (on an Ethernet with about 200 workstations and hosts) > - what host s/w is available or are you using successfully We had to do major kludges obtained through internal DEC friends to get it working under Ultrix. I assume that VMS support is straightforward to deal with. > >Thanks...TREVOR WRIGHT > GEC Research > yc23%uk.co.gec-mrc.a@ucl-cs John Kohl MIT/Project Athena ---- John Kohl MIT/Project Athena
X230GV@TAMVM1.BITNET (Glenn L Vanderburg) (05/22/87)
This is going to laser-lovers and info-postscript, so I apologize to anyone who gets it twice. (Or more, considering the looping problems. ;-) Does anyone out there have a PrintServer-40? What do you think of it? How does it hold up? How's the maintenance? How does the real throughput compare with the rated speed? Any opinions, statistics, horror stories, or raves will be very helpful. We're considering getting one here (Texas A&M U), but I have my doubts about the price/performance, especially with regard to duty cycle. I will gladly summarize any personal replies to the list. Thanks very much! Glenn Vanderburg
reid@DECWRL.DEC.COM.UUCP (06/04/87)
Disclaimer: I work for DEC and I have worked a little bit with the product group that produced this printer. Everything I tell you here is completely true, but you have to keep in mind that I am an employee. We have an LPS40; it is one of the first shipped. I enabled accounting for it on April 9, 1987. Since then it has printed 27557 pages, of which about 1000 were 11x17 paper and the rest were 8.5x11 paper. Very roughly, it prints about 1000 pages per working day. For line printer listings, simple text formatter output, and so forth, it prints at nearly the rated speed of 40 ppm. Most files generated by troff and Scribe and TeX print at about 30ppm, though it is possible to produce such files that slow it down to, say, 15-20ppm by excessive use of font size changes and included figures. Here are some actual numbers, culled out of the Transcript log file for the machine. These are lifted verbatim: psbanner: ishtar:jg Job: paper.psc Date: Tue Jun 2 12:24:24 1987 lps40.comm: Tue Jun 2 12:24:31 -I- Start jg@ishtar lps40.comm: Tue Jun 2 12:35:31 -S- End jg@ishtar, 207 pages printed This is a troff job; it is the X Windows/C Library interface manual. The file is 1.2 megabytes. It printed in exactly 11 minutes, which is a processing rate of 18.8 pages per minute. psbanner: granite:rost Job: doc.ps Date: Tue Jun 2 09:44:54 1987 lps40.comm: Tue Jun 2 09:45:03 -I- Start rost@granite lps40.comm: Tue Jun 2 09:48:27 -S- End rost@granite, 100 pages printed This is another troff job. It is a troff job that uses only a few fonts but that has a number of illustrations. It printed at 29.4 pages per minute. psbanner: acetes:boggs Job: tproc.lst Date: Mon May 25 18:37:59 1987 lps40.comm: Mon May 25 18:38:11 -I- Start boggs@acetes lps40.comm: Mon May 25 18:44:42 -S- End boggs@acetes, 237 pages printed I had to search back this far in the logs to find a large text file. Most of the text files that were printed were just a few tens of pages. This one is a microcode listing of some hardware gadget; the listed lines were too long to print in portrait orientation so the listing was printed with 200-character-long lines in 7-point type, in landscape mode. This file printed at 36.4 pages per minute. It was 2 megabytes long. psbanner: saturn:nettles Job: txWindow.c Date: Wed May 20 15:58:41 1987 lps40.comm: Wed May 20 15:58:47 -I- Start nettles@saturn lps40.comm: Wed May 20 16:03:38 -S- End nettles@saturn, 183 pages printed This was the largest "ordinary text file" I could find in the log. It is an ordinary listing of a C program (a text editor written at Berkeley). The file printed at 37.7 pages per minute. I have no idea what the rated duty cycle of this machine is. You would have to consult the product literature for that. Where this machine really shines is not so much in raw duty cycle, but in high-speed demand printing. Getting a 207-page typeset manual (with multiple fonts and included graphics) in 11 minutes is really pretty wonderful.
mcgowan@ur-tut.UUCP (Craig McGowan) (06/16/87)
I see that you are using the Printserver-40 on a Unix Machine. I didn't know this was possible. Could you tell me the secret? We will be buying one soon and the Unix people around here would like to use it. I've heard rumors that the support is there in Ultrix 2.0, but that's about all I know.