bovet@hao.ucar.edu (Ray Bovet) (11/08/90)
We are planning on providing both an IBm PC clone and a Mac in a public area for users. We would like to share a single laser printer between the two. The normal way to connect a laser printer to a Mac is to buy a Postscript printer and connect it via Appletalk. The normal way to connect a laser printer to a clone is to buy an HP Laserjet and connect it via the parallel interface. I'd certainly be comfortable buying an HP with HP's Postscript cartridge so that it could go either way (although you have to turn it off and remove the cartridge in order to go back to HPCL). But if we do that, how do we switch between Appletalk (which requires yet another adapter for the HP) and the parallel port on the PC? Does anyone have any suggestions on how to do this cleanly? Any suggestions for how else to accomplish our overall goals more efficiently (please no flames about IBM vs Apple, etc). Ray
steve@Advansoft.COM (Steve Savitzky) (11/09/90)
I am currently doing this very thing, using a LJIIP. I am NOT using a postscript cartridge: I use MacPrint on the Mac, which basically turns your LJ into a Quickdraw printer, and talks through the serial port at 19.2 Kbaud, which is slow but not impossible. If I ever need postscript I would probably get a postscript interpreter for the Mac, e.g. Jetscript or Freedom of Press. You need at least an extra megabyte of memory in the printer to get 300DPI graphics. MacPrint is what HP recommends, by the way. An additional advantage of this hack is that I simply plug the Mac into the LJ's serial port (the cable comes with the MacPrint software, $89 total), the PC into the parallel port (standard Centronics interface), and switch between them with the front panel. (QUESTION: Anyone out there know if there is a magic escape sequence I can send to switch ports?) There seems to be a sort of conspiracy between the manufacturers and the Mac magazine reviewers not to mention this option; this results in the LJIIP getting comments like "nice print quality, but very expensive because of all the adapters you need." I paid $1200 total. -- \ --Steve Savitzky-- \ ADVANsoft Research Corp \ REAL hackers use an AXE! \ \ steve@advansoft.COM \ 4301 Great America Pkwy \ #include<disclaimer.h> \ \ arc!steve@apple.COM \ Santa Clara, CA 95954 \ 408-727-3357 \ \__ steve@arc.UUCP _________________________________________________________