JIM HOLSONBACK wrote in a message to ROY J. TELLASON:

 JH> Hello, Roy.  This is actually about printer switch-boxes. - - 

-=> ROY J. TELLASON wrote to PHIL MARLOWE <=-
 JH> 
 PM> I used to use a switchbox to choose between  printers, but it was
 PM> the old style mechanical type. Worked pretty good.

 RJT> I've got a few of those around,  one with 36-pin centronics type
 RJT> connectors, one with 25-pin connectors,  and a couple that have
 RJT> mixtures of both,  allowing for the use of "standard"
printer cables in
 RJT> all three directions.

 PM> I've heard of newer types, but haven't kept up.

 RJT> I heard something about those being a problem for use with laser
 RJT> printers,  but can't remember why,  exactly.

 JH> Main prob I recall reading about with laser printers seemed to have
 JH> been with older ones like original HP Laserjet types - - on those,
 JH> if the manual switch type wasn't set to the laser printer, and you
 JH> switched it over while it was trying to print,  I heard it would
 JH> damage some of those laser printers. 

This agrees with my recollection.

 JH> So back then, and maybe even now, autoswitches are recommended for 
 JH> use with laser printers.  I think that prob may have since then 
 JH> pretty much gone away, since for awhile here I had two of those 
 JH> manual ABCD boxes set up, so I could switch whichever 'puter I 
 JH> wanted to my choice of printers.  I got that wrong often enough 
 JH> that I would have blown up my old Panasonic KXP-4420 laser printer 
 JH> long ago if my setup had that problem.

In my case,  it'd be easy enough to add a printer port to something,  or
maybe even do stuff over the LAN,  once I finish getting that configured...

 JH> One nuisance problem is that when sending the wrong output to the
 JH> wrong printer,  you can mess up a _lot_ of sheets of paper before
 JH> you can get the darn thing stopped.

Yeah,  I can see how that would happen.

 JH> I have a few small ABCD autoswitches, and used those for a bit, but
 JH> right now I'm not using any of them.  I even had at least one which
 JH> could work in either direction, so I had it so that I could again
 JH> hook up my choice of boxes to choice of printers, using the
 JH> autoswitches in manual mode.

 JH> I've heard that some of the autoswitches don't work well with some
 JH> of the newer color inkjet printers, and I saw a bit of that when I
 JH> had the above setup - I didn't get all the functionality back and
 JH> forth between the HP software on the machine and the HP Deskjet
 JH> 890C - stuff like the testing and diagnostics software.  On this
 JH> type inkjet printer, they do as much as they can with the Winders
 JH> software, and the printer only has two buttons on it - - one to
 JH> print, and the other is a power switch.

Hm.

 JH> None of the inkjets I've tried switchboxes with was a "Winprinter"
 JH> - and I imagine there could be a whole set of other probs with
 JH> those and autoswitches.

Yeah,  I'll bet there would.  Me,  I hope not to encounter any of that
win-crap in any future hardware acquisitions here.  So far so good...

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