Hi John.

17-Jun-04 22:39:14, John Tserkezis wrote to All

 ac>> Only problem is the LaserWriter can't be connected directly to
 ac>> the 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
 JT> printe
 >> cable you can probably figure it out.

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

HMM, that may be the difference between "laser writer" and
"personal laser
writer".

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

That makes sense SCSI is the only high-bandwidth IO the early (m68K based)
macs had, now they have firewire etc...

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

:)

 >> If there's an option labeled "postscript printer" it'll
work. (same
 >> if you want to use it with linux)

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

ok... the laser writer main board had a 68040 processor (possibly 68030),
(and ROM, RAM, etc..) on it. and was about the size of an A4 page... sounds like
the personal laser writer is totally different. At the time it was moere
powerful than the Apple desktops  :)

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

About $600 NZ I think (this was over 10 yeears ago)

the finished areicle was postscript capable we used telix to upload some
postscript programs we wrote (a spirograph program, and a 3d mesh surface
thing...

 JT> No wait, that's probably why they never had significant market
 JT> penetration...

yeah :)

 -=> Bye <=-
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