From: John Tserkezis 
Reply-To: Fidonet AVtech Echo 

Jasen Betts wrote:

> The apple laser-writer combined an HP produced "printing engine" with
> and apple produced rendering card and case. I think it's a laserjet II
> engine. (I don't know if the "personal laser writer" is different

  It's a Canon Series II engine.  OEM'ed to many different manufacturers by 
changing only the main board.  The "DC controller" as it was known was fed 
rastered graphics by the main board, and in turn controlled the motors and 
other mechanicals to print a page.

>  ac> Only problem is the LaserWriter can't be connected directly to the
>  ac> PC
> 
> You need to use a serial cable with a special connector, the reverse of the
> cable MAC owners use to connect modems. A modem cable with a gender changer
> may work.  equipped with the pinout of the mac modem cable and the mac printer
> cable you can probably figure it out.

  The only one I had seen, appeared to be very different from the norm, in that 
the main board as I had known them was missing, replaced by some other very 
small card, and there was what looked like a SCSI connector (wide centronics 
socket) at the rear.

  I was told it was SCSI, but the lack of smarts prompts me to believe it was 
some kind of "zero or low" smarts laser printer where much of the
processing 
was done by the host computer.  Much like RPL "winmodems" offload
processing to 
the host.

  Didn't bother me none, I had spare cards lying around so turned it into a 
HPLJ equivalent...

>  ac> (due to different connector types, and presumably there are no
>  ac> Windows drivers for it anyway).
> 
> If there's an option labeled "postscript printer" it'll
work. (same if you
> want to use it with linux)

  The one that I had seen was definatly NOT postscript.  There was barely a 
handlful of bits on the card.  Appeared to be only interface logic.

> I now a guy who convertted a LJ2 into a laserwriter by ordering a
> replacemnt rendering card from apple and installing it in place of the LJ2
> rendering card. (he was a typesetter who wanted a postscript printer, and
> didn't want to pay thousands of dollars)

  Postscript capable motherboards are (were) quite expensive.  No idea how much 
Apple had the pleasure of charing for them, but can't see them charging too 
much more otherwise I wouldn't expect too much market penetration.

  No wait, that's probably why they never had significant market penetration...
-- 
       -o)
       /\\    Message void if penguin violated
      _\_V    Don't mess with the penguin

Linux Registered User # 302622                         http://counter.li.org>
Fido: 3:712/610  BBS/FAX: +61-2-9716-8310  Internet: jt{at}techniciansyndrome.org
--- ifmail v.2.15