john@amc-gw.amc.com (John Sambrook) (08/14/90)
Here is the summary of the responses I received to my recent post requesting recommendations for a replacement line printer. Names of the respondents have been removed to protect their anonymity. Thanks to all who responded! -- I bought a Mannesman MT/660 (600lpm) 3 1/2 years ago and it's still running strong. It only had one major problem when a CAP blew on the driver board. Also I've modified lpr(1) and friends to support new flags and the following modes (along with a special filter) ... NLQ (near letter quality mode) Underlining Boldface Double size characters 2 versions of the Seriff font 10, 12, 13.3, 15, 16.7 cpi 6, 8, and 10 lpi I think they also have a 900 lpm version out now. -- You might investigate the Printronix P6000 series. We have a P6280L which we use as a remote line printer for our IBM 3090 (the printer is controlled by a PC which runs a HASP emulator). It can print decently down to 17.1 characters per inch, and the samples of barcodes I've seen look decent. It's a well-built, reliable machine (ours has only needed PM and one minor adjustment since we got it last March. I think ours cost about $8000, and then there's a service contract if you want. Printronix, 17500 Cartwright Rd., PO Box 19559, Irvine CA 92713 (714) 863-1900 -- We have a Hewlett-Packard 2563 300 lpm printer. The printer family also has 600 lpm and 1200 lpm models. It supports a reasonable subset of the laserjet commands. It is quite rugged (no service calls in at least three years of operation) and the ribbons get reasonable lifetime. The campus computer center used to have a Univac printer (expensive to buy but utterly reliable); they have replaced it with a Printronix which they are fairly satisfied with. It tends to jam when used with realy cheap paper. Both of these are dotmatrix printers which print a row of dots at a time instead of a column as with the PC-type printers. No doubt there are others. DataProducts used to make pretty solid printers, and Mannesmann-Tally is still in the printer business. My experience is that the printers with the higher initial cost tend to make up for it over the long haul by being inexpensive to maintain. Hope this helps. -- Dataproducts has line printers that meets these criteria. Or, you might want to look at laser printers from QMS/Imagen. -- -- John Sambrook DNS: john@amc.com Applied Microsystems Corporation UUCP: amc-gw!john Redmond, Washington 98073 Dial: (206) 882-2000 ext. 630