Ok, got the Perq tapes

[Tony Duell]

[Canon CX printer]

>
> But, I didn't know that there was a popular Perq interface.

It's hardly 'popular' (or common). Any PERQ OIO card is rare. It's
just that the most common one (in fact AFAIK the only one from 3
Rivers) has the option of the Canon CX printer interface. Note that if
you find a 3 Rivers OIO board with just the ethernet interface then
it's possible to add the Canon printer interface although some of the
ICs were hard to find 20 years ago and are presumably even harder to
find now.

The other OIO boards that I have seen are a bare wire-wrap one which
was often used to make the QIC-02 tape interface (I think Bob had
that), although as I mentioned there's enough space on the
Ethernet/Canon board to add this logic and wire-wrap it together.  And
an interface for a Datacopy digital camera, which I am pretty sure Bob
didn't have

> THAT makes it much more worthwhile!
>
>
> IIRC, at one time TallTree (JLaser) sold a cheap reverisble modification
> for using LaserJet as a CX-VDO, and a similar interface for SX.

There was an official (Canon) SX-VDO printer (I am not sure if that's
the right name but you know what I mean) which had a simple buffer
board in place of the formatter And there was also a 3rd party board
that went in the option connector of the Laserjet 2 formatter and
which added a CX-VDO interface. I don't know if either works with the
PERQ, but I suspect they both do.

In the case of the CX engine printers, there's a 34 pin cable that
links the formatter board (in the top lid) to the 'DC controller
board' -- the board with a microcontroller on it that controls the
printer motors, laser, etc. The CX-VDO interface is just a straight
through cable conected to that connector on the DC controller board
and a DC37 socket on the other end. There's a 6 pin connector on the
DC controller board that connects to the 5 status LEDs (and a common
+5V line) on the CX-VDO panel.

Of course toner cartridges for these printers are getting almost
impossible to find now. And I don't think any later Laserjets had a
'VDO' interface option.

>
> Printer-Works used to provide a lot of information about them.

Yes. Bob sent me the PrinterWorks CX parts catalogue _after_ I'd
rebuilt my Canon LBP8A1 (with a dead formatter board) as a CX-VDO...

-tony