Info-Mac 1992 August/info-mac-1992.iso/Report/Mac Laser Jet Up Rev.txt

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 13KB | 271 lines

Date: Sun, 10 May 92 17:23:24 EDT
From: Richard Sucgang <[e-mail]>
Subject: Mac/LaserJet - the Up-Rev


The Uneasy Marriage : using an HP LaserJet series II with a
Macintosh

Introduction:

The LaserJet series II is a sturdily built machine, and many of the
originals been humming along for quite some time. The one we have
in the lab served us quite well for basic word processing with some
PC clones for some years. With the arrival of the Macintosh IIsi,
however, we were suddenly confronted with the problem of printing
using the LaserJet. The option of purchasing a new printer was out
of the question, and in the process of determining the best
solution for the current dilemma, I found out that there are many
users in similar situations. This is what I call an updatable
review: a simple text document with version numbers to keep it up
to date. This version is 1.0, first released on May 6, 1992. While
I probably did not expend much time programming this, I did spend
quite some time researching and calling and writing to companies
and reading to write this, so, if this up-rev has helped you,
please drop me a line. If you have any further information, please
forward them to me. Contact information at the end of this
document. In the future, I plan to write this into a Hypercard
stack, so hang in there!

Background:

The primary obstacle in getting older LaserJets to communicate with
a Macintosh is that Macintoshes communicate with laser printers
primarily using PostScript, Adobe's industry standard page
description language, and Hewlett-Packard pioneered the use of PCL
as the page description language of LaserJets. Officially, HP never
intended the original LaserJet series II to interpret PostScript,
and, in effect, do not really support it in this respect. HP makes
PostScript cartridges as upgrades for the LaserJets IIP and IID,
and distributes drivers for them. Call them at [phone]
(customer service), [phone] (printer support), or (303) 353-
7650. Printer drivers are also available at Compuserve under GO
HPPER. [thanks to Isako Hoshino ([e-mail]) for this
information].

Before our current solution, I spent some time testing different
options to allow our Mac Iisi to communicate with our vintage HP
LaserJet series II. To start, I checked out a good review of
connecting Macintoshes to LaserJets that was published in an early
issue of MacUser (May, 1991). However, the review seemed to
concentrate on the currently supported LaserJets (IIp, IId, III,
etc.), and not the more vintage models. Further, opinions were
light, and not as thorough as I would have liked. It does provide
a good listing of company as sources of solutions.

Without resorting to PostScript, solutions generally involve
converting QuickDraw images into TIFF equivalents, and transmitting
this through the serial connection. This, of course, means that
these solutions are very slow. When resorting to PostScript, there
are two paths, either to interpret the code on the Mac, and
transmit the resulting image as TIFF (even slower) or upgrading the
hardware to include a PostScript interpreter.

<begin specific products>

Products tested:

a. MacPrint : I got this piece of software at an incredible $31
sale price from Mac's Place (800-367-4222); I doubt if it has
remained at this price. MacPrint 1.2 is the version I used, and
comes with drivers for a variety of non-Macintosh printers,
including the LaserJet II, IIp, IId, LaserJet+, and other PCL
printers, and the necessary DIN-8 to DB-25 connector for hooking up
to the serial port of the LJ II. An upgrade to 1.3 has appeared
since (although Insight has failed to inform me of the upgrade,
take this as a hint about customer support), so some new features
may have been added, most notably on the System 7 compatibility
front. The manual was fairly easy to follow, although I think it
fails to provide any usable technical information on the workings
of the program. For example, an extremely useful piece of
information that was missing was the pin configuration of the
cable.

Basically, the program claims to work by translating QuickDraw into
PCL, first creating the raster image on the Mac, and transmitting
it to the LaserJet. The user has the option of generating 75 dpi,
150 dpi or 300 dpi printouts (I guess screen, 24 pin dot matrix and
laser printer resolutions), requiring progressively longer amounts
of time to finish printing. Higher resolutions, then, come from
scaling the page 4 fold to generate the 300 dpi output from a 72
dpi screen QuickDraw display. Bitmapped fonts can only be used if
there is a size version 4x the size of the original; with the use
of System 7 and TrueType, one could print fonts at any size with
glee. The program *does* come with support for built in and
cartridge supported fonts, and mixing fonts on the same page is
possible.

With increasing resolution comes increasing demands printer RAM; we
had to upgrade to 2.5 Mb before full page graphics would print.
With 512 Kb, usually the page would print until the current memory
is full, at which time the printer will spit the unfinished page
out, and finish it on another page. Using internal and cartridge
fonts will lower the RAM requirement, but that wastes the wide
array of fonts available for the Macintosh. We generally could make
do with text, though, and 150 dpi is not too shabby.

Paint objects, of course, print out at 72 dpi all the time,
although draw graphics can print out at 300 dpi. As with all
QuickDraw to TIFF translators, an interesting bug appears with fill
patterns : as resolution goes up, fill patterns become smaller
instead of just becoming higher in resolution. For example, a fill
pattern of a dot every 16 dots in screen will print as a dot every
4 dots at 300 dpi.

The biggest problem with MacPrint and similar software is that it
really ties up your Mac. The program does not have its own
background printing and does not indicate if 3rd party spoolers
will work. I have not tested any.

Known bug: the driver should be left in the *root* System folder
under Sys 7.*. This could not be more strongly stressed. Many
people curse and scream just because the smart System folder files
it under Extensions, and the manual does not point out this flaw
(actually, the manual does not make a lot of mention of System 7).

<opinion mode> In some ads (most notably, from MacZone or
MacWareHouse), it is claimed that MacPrint does not need
PostScript. Of course, since it does not SUPPORT PostScript. If you
have ATM or TrueType, this is a good product for $31, tho. In
general, it is a good product, with lots of fairly satisfied users.

MacPrint : Published by Insight Development Corp., [phone].
Latest version : 1.3

MacConnection price, as of April, 1992: $92

b. Freedom of Press Lite : FoP is a PostScript emulator; it
redirects the LaserWriter driver to generate a PostScript file,
which is written to disk, and is interpreted by the Mac to create
a raster which is then downloaded to the printer.

In addition to downloading a TIFF image through a serial line, FoP
incorporates time it takes to use the Mac to interpret PostScript
code - the result : the thing is slower than a clogged toilet. In
the time I tried it, I frequently had to leave the thing to print
overnight. It came with no cables; and did not provide sources for
cables.

Since FoP intercepts PostScript output from the LaserWriter driver
to interpret it, spooling actually means that under MultiFinder
there will be two applications running in the background:
PrintMonitor and FoP. This results in a tremendous performance hit
even with fairly large areas of memory. Since TIFF files are
initially written to disk, FoP requires tons of memory, for
volatile and disk; with FoP and System 7 running, you'd need at
least 10 Mb of RAM, and another 5-10 Mb on disk free to function
passably (personally, I don't know how this will affect disk
fragmentation).

FoP Lite comes with 17 of the LaserWriter fonts, but I found them
to be of very poor quality. Recommendation: if there is sufficient
disk space, use in the few times with a PostScript graphic output
is desired.

Freedom of Press Lite is made by Custom Applications, 800-873-4367,
latest version is 3.03.

Mac's Place May 1992 price is $88.

c. PacificConnect : My current solution, and brought tons of relief
from other members of the lab. Not normally recommended by Mac
mavens, since this is usually classified as a DOS product. This is
an optional I/O board for the LJ II, which provides the LJ with 4
serial connections via RJ-11 (telephone wire) jacks, and a parallel
port (standard DB-25). The serial ports are configurable up to
115.2 K baud, although the Macintosh software only supports 9.6 K
and 19.2 K baud. It also comes with a built in buffer, with either
256K or 1250K, and automatic switching between serial and parallel
ports. The package came with what would be needed to connect 4 PC's
and 1 Mac to the LaserJet, containing both long cables and adaptors
to convert DIN 8/ DB 25/ DB 9 to RJ-11's. Initially, I had some
problems with the hardware, which I traced to the RJ-11/Din 8
connector, but that is a different story.

For sharing PC's, the PacificConnect board is excellent, and has
quite a number of similar competitors. What sets it apart is the
software. The configuration and setup for the PC is fairly
straightforward. For Macintoshes, two drivers are provided: MacJet,
the QuickDraw driver, and MacPage, the PostScript driver. MacPage
requires installation of the PacificPage PostScript emulation
cartridge. In the absence of the cartridge, I was unable to test
the MacPage software, although technical support assures me that
only the PacificPage cartridge is useable.

MacJet: The software is not certified Sys 7 compatible; Customer
Support insisted at the time I had the hardware problems that the
board is not compatible with TrueType. Well, after getting the
replacement adaptor, I find that 95% of the time, it works fine
under System 7.  The Control Panel and the driver work fine with
TrueType.

Finally, a driver with PCL downloadable fonts! Good fonts, too.
With Substitute fonts enabled, text documents print quickly and
painlessly. Unfortunately, fonts included are bitmapped, and do not
contain the full LW set of characters, so special characters may
not print. Also, on occasion, kerning may be thrown off. Finally,
there doesn't seem to be a source of other fonts, third party or
otherwise.

Color can be printed as grays. There is a 50% reduction option, as
well as a draft mode which uses whatever default font the LaserJet
is on.

The driver also provides for using the built in line drawing
routines in PCL4 of the LaserJet, which helps accelerate certain
graphic printing. Again, higher resolutions (which is what most
everyone does) results in longer wait times.

While the software permits one to up to 19.2 K baud for downloading
the TIFF images, setting up the original configuration requires a
DOS based machine (I am unsure whether a SoftPC emulation will be
sufficient.). It is not explicitly stated that at least one DOS
based PC will be required to configure ports - something I consider
rather misleading.

In a mixed environment, switching between the different PCs is
easy. In my opinion, customer support is somewhat weak; if you are
at all technically proficient, you can fly circles around the tech
support staff. It appears that technical support is geared more for
Windows users, and not Macintoshes. Getting through on the phone is
the first challenge; on the several occasions I called, I had to
wait over 15 mins on hold before getting the operator - and this is
NOT a toll free call. At least twice I was told that the person I
was talking to did not have the necessary expertise to assist me on
my question, and was promised a return call. No return calls were
received.

All in all, a good solution for a mixed environment.

PacificConnect, PacificPage are made by Pacific Data Products, 619-
552-0880.

PC Connection May 1992 price is $275 for 256K buffer, and $349 for
1.25Mb. Buffer memory is upgradeable.

<end specific products>

On the side...

In the Dec. 10, 1991 issue of MacWeek mentions the release of
MacPrint ver. 1.3, and a new LaserJet driver called MacJET
(infringement on PDP product?). Any reviews about this, please post
and send to me. I am eagerly awaiting feedback on these products.

Coming up next version...

Tscript and BridgePort


This Up-Rev, v1.0 was written by Richard Sucgang, May 6, 1992.
E-mail : [e-mail];
[e-mail].

voice: [phone]

SnailMail: Dept. of Anatomy and Cell Biology,
Columbia University
630 W 168th St., New York, NY 10032, USA