11 Nov
2012
11 Nov
'12
5:04 p.m.
On 11/11/2012 05:01 PM, Tony Duell wrote:
AS I mentioend ewarlier, there was a VDO interface board abailable for
the SX printer. The orinial/official one fitted in place of the
formatter, it was just a simple set of buffers. The SX DC controller
board has single-ended 'beam detect' and 'video' signals whic hare not
really suitable tfor sending down the cable to/from the host.
I am told the serial[1] control.status interface on the SX is upwards
compatible with that on the CX, the former accepts a few more comamnds.
I've never managed to get a list of the commands/status messages that are
used on this interface, fortunately you can ignore it if you just want ot
pritn from the nornmal paper tray, etc.
[1] This is a synchronous interfce with a separae clock signal. It's not
evenclose to RS232 .
The NeXT printer, if memory serves, connects to the desktop machine
via a DE9 connector. This suggests (at least I think it does) that
there's another board in there that's talking to the DC controller...I
don't think nine pins is enough for the whole "dumb" control interface,
especially if there are high-speed differential signals in the mix
eating up a pair of lines.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
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
cut the cost of the printer down to about 1000 pounds/dollars which was
very cheap in its time, esp when compared to the apple laser.. I think
it was a canon engine.
This is also how the NeXT printer works. It's an SX engine. It's
surprisingly fast at rendering complex pages.