11 Nov
2012
11 Nov
'12
11:45 a.m.
On 11 November 2012 19:27, Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote:
On 11/10/2012 10:17 PM, Mouse wrote:
There's also something called a SPARCprinter which is a similar device
for use on (surprise surprise!) SPARCs. (The interface, at least in
the cases I've seen, is an Sbus card - the SUNW,lpvi.) I got mine
working under NetBSD ages ago, but haven't done anything of
significance with it since.
It has the interesting feature that it can run at either 300 or 400
dpi, selectable by the host, and that it can use smaller-than-full-page
page bitmaps, supports seven different paper sizes, and can separately
invert the page bitmap or the fill around the page bitmap.
Unfortunately, the inverting bits don't actually change it between
write-white and write-black. :)
Oh yes, I had forgotten about the SPARCprinter. Very nice.
This reminds me, I'm pretty sure the NeXT printer was actually run at
400dpi.
I think you're right.
It's not quite correct to compare the NeXT laser printer with the
later GDI printers for Windows and so on, though - even those have
enough smarts to take a command stream from the parallel port,
interpret it and print it.
I think a closer comparison might be the Amstrad PCW printers, which
were directly driven by the computer's logic and had no onboard logic
of their own at all. I don't know enough about the NeXT laser to say
for sure, though.
--
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There was a laserprinter available for i think the
Atari ST (or
later model) that did away with the processor and and used the
atari.
This is also how the NeXT printer works. It's an SX engine. It's
surprisingly fast at rendering complex pages.