cyrus@comtec.UUCP (Cyrus in person) (05/11/91)
I was given a Imagen 3308 it's missing a cable from the interface box to the printer and before I put any time and money into it, I was wonderning if anyone could tell me what it emulates if any thing? also I have been unable find an address of Imagen, are they still around? does anyone have there phone number? Anyone that has any info bad or good it is appreciated! Thank You! -Cyrus... Please send any info to "comtec!cyrus@ucsd.edu" I can only post to this Group we don't receive comp.periphs.printers.
geof@aurora.com (Geoffrey H. Cooper) (05/16/91)
In article <308@comtec.UUCP> cyrus@comtec.UUCP (Cyrus in person) writes: >I was given a Imagen 3308 it's missing a cable from the interface box to the > printer and before I put any time and money into it, I was wonderning if > anyone could tell me what it emulates if any thing? also I have been unable > find an address of Imagen, are they still around? does anyone have there > phone number? IMAGEN is now a subsidiary of QMS, Inc. You can still call IMAGEN itself at (408) 986-9400, although I think that the ImageServer series (of which the 3308 is one) is handled from Mobile, Alabama now. The 3308 printer supports a set of emulations: imPRESS, diablo, line printer, epson FX80, and maybe one or two more. An UltraScript upgrade is available, but the price is high (swapping processor board, buying hard disk, etc.). Impress is a device-dependent page description language that was developed by Imagen in 1981 or thereabouts. It has similar text features to LJ's PCL IV, but much better graphics capabilities. The 3308 has the last version of this to be created, so it is "up to date". Impress generators were developed for many applications including tex, troff, scribe, interleaf, FrameMaker. There is an IMAGEN support tape that one may want to buy for a small amount of $$$, or just use it as is. You should be able to turn it into a very nice TROFF or TEX printer. To get it to work: you must have a working system floppy in the drive. For the cable to the printer, a "straight-thru" db-xx ribbon cable will do nicely (since the distance is small) unless you have a packet radio transmitter in the same room :-). Hook a terminal up to the "console" db-25 connector at 9600 baud with space parity. When it boots, you should see various informative(?) messages. The marking engine is a Canon LBP-CX (beige), or LBP-SX(off-white and flat, and you are lucky). The CX cartridges are those for the original LJ-1. The SX cartridges are those for the LJ-II and LJ-III. You could also throw away (sniff) the RIP box and buy something that generates signals for a raw LBP-S/CX marking engine. There are a number of PC boards that do this, some from QMS. For example, anything that drives the Canon LBP-8/II with video adapter will drive a raw CX. - Geof -- geof@aurora.com / aurora!geof@decwrl.dec.com / geof%aurora.com@decwrl.dec.com