jaz@abvax.UUCP (Jack A. Zucker) (11/10/89)
Since printing to the NeXT laser printer seems to be the biggest bottleneck, has anyone used the NeXT with a "smart" postscript printer ? Do the NeXT applications support sending the postscript directly to a printer ? QMS and Brother both make 16mz 68000 based postscript printers that can be bought from NY for about $3800.00. They are 300dpi and can print 8 pages / minute, but the good part is that the computer can send the relatively small (in most cases) postscript source to the printer, and the CPU in the printer does the hard work. Before anyone says, "well the NeXT printer is superior because it has 400dpi", well I have been using a 300dpi printer at work, and never have felt the need for more resolution. Also, there is a company called NewGen that makes two Intel i860 (risc) based postscript printers that have scsi interfaces. At $4495.00 for the 300dpi, and $5295.00 for the 400dpi, these are the cheapest printers that I have seen with a scsi connector. On a related subject, does anyone know why more printers are not equipped with Enet ports ? With Enet cards selling for <$200.00 for the IBM PC, I would think we would see lots of cheap laser printers with this type of connection. The Imagen printer we have at work has Ethernet, but it costs about $20,000.00 !!!! jaz@calvin.icd.ab.com
olson@brutus.cs.uiuc.edu (Robert Olson) (11/11/89)
You can use a regular PostScript printer. We've used Apple Laserwriters
and a QMS PostScript printer with no problems - they were already there on
the network and we just added the printcap entries for them (in NetInfo)
and they work fine. Haven't tried with a printer hooked directly to the
cube, tho. Don't see any reason it shouldn't work - when you print to a
non-NeXT printer it just spits out PostScript.
Bob
Bob Olson University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign
Internet: olson@cs.uiuc.edu UUCP: {uunet|convex|pur-ee}!uiucdcs!olsonmorrison@grads.cs.ubc.ca (Rick Morrison) (11/11/89)
In article <953@abvax.UUCP> jaz@abvax.UUCP (Jack A. Zucker) writes: > >Since printing to the NeXT laser printer seems to be the biggest bottleneck, >has anyone used the NeXT with a "smart" postscript printer ? I can't say that I find printing to the NeXT printer a big bottle neck. In my opinion a dumb printer is the way to go. The memory that the smart printers require is much better utilized on the host. ---------------------------------------------- Rick Morrison | {alberta,uw-beaver,uunet}!ubc-cs!morrison Dept. of Computer Science| morrison@cs.ubc.ca Univ. of British Columbia| morrison%ubc.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa Vancouver, B.C. V6T 1W5 | morrison@ubc.csnet (ubc-csgrads=128.189.97.20) (604) 228-4327
dtgcube (Edward Jung) (11/11/89)
> Since printing to the NeXT laser printer seems to be the biggest bottleneck, > has anyone used the NeXT with a "smart" postscript printer ? [...] > jaz@calvin.icd.ab.com Yes. We use a Qume CrystalPrint Publisher, a RISC-based, Postscript compatible LCD shutter-based printer attached via a 19.2 kbaud serial connection to a Cube. Besides the incredible inconvenience of not being able to download type 1 Adobe fonts to it (yet! I presume this will change soon), it works very well. The font downloading problem is not an issue for *true* postscript printers. The Qume was quite inexpensive (clone, you know, and a Developer's discount). Email me if you need more information (e.g. how to set it all up); it's pretty straight-forward since NeXT system software directly supports an Apple Laserwriter across the serial port, and pretty much everybody is compatible with *that*. BTW, printing is a heck of alot faster, in general, than when using the NeXT printer. But if you do alot of gray-scale work, the 400 dpi makes an amazing difference. Edward Jung (ed@dtg.com is usually best) -- Edward Jung The Deep Thought Group, L.P. BIX: ejung 3400 Swede Hill Road NeXT or UNIX mail Clinton, WA. 98236 UUCP: uunet!dtgcube!ed Internet: ed@dtg.com
halliday@cheddar.cc.ubc.ca (Laura Halliday) (11/14/89)
Actually, I don't find the printing speed unacceptable on a NeXT (maybe I've been corrupted by LaserWriter Plus print times...), but what I'd *really* like to see is some way of adjusting the priority of the imaging process so that I can do useful work while the system is printing something. Perhaps this could be a new Preferences item: users who want fast printing could set the priority high, and sit back and watch while the cube prints. Users who want to do some- thing else while the system is printing could set the priority lower. Transmitting the bitmap to the printer is a hard real-time operation, which is why the printer has its own DMA channel. But constructing that bitmap in the first place has no real-time constraints, other than the user's patience... ...laura