This is SUMMARY:-NeXT-Floppy-Drive-and-Printer in view mode; [Up]
Date: Sun 08-Jan-1991 17:29:13 From: ye@henri.ucsb.edu (Hong Ye) Subject: SUMMARY: NeXT Floppy Drive and Printer Thanks to everyone who responded to my posting. Here is a brief summary. Floppy Drive: (1) The drive can read Mac 1.44Mb floppies. But someone has to come up with the software to handle Mac file system. (2) There are third-party floppy drive vendors that have Mac-compatible products. (3) 20Mb+ floppy drives should hit the market pretty soon. Laser Printer: NeXT has presumably opened up the printing architecture with 2.0. With an approriate printer driver, your NeXT machine should be able to support any printer. Now, any volunteer to write a driver for LaserJet? David
Date: Sun 08-Jan-1991 19:03:43 From: smb@csn.org!datran2 Subject: Re: SUMMARY: NeXT Floppy Drive and Printer In article <8033@hub.ucsb.edu> ye@henri.ucsb.edu (Hong Ye) writes: >Laser Printer: > NeXT has presumably opened up the printing architecture with 2.0. > With an approriate printer driver, your NeXT machine should be > able to support any printer. Now, any volunteer to write a driver > for LaserJet? This is certainly do-able. In fact Data Transforms has been writing and selling printer drivers for bitmap printers for 10 years now. (We don't all have the luxury of institutional support) I do have one observation about this. The bitblasting printer port that connects to the NeXT printer operates at speeds far exceeding those supported by an RS232 laser printer. A full page bitmap at 300dpi is 7,560,000 bits. This a little more than 13 minutes per page at 9600 baud. Printers capable of 38.4kbaud will be able to get this down to a little over 3 minutes per page. Thats a long wait. After you've waited a half hour to get a 10 page document, the price of the NeXT printer doesn't look so bad. Steve
Date: Sun 09-Jan-1991 02:57:58 From: mikec@wam.umd.edu (Michael D. Callaghan) Subject: Re: SUMMARY: NeXT Floppy Drive and Printer In article <8033@hub.ucsb.edu> ye@henri.ucsb.edu (Hong Ye) writes: >Laser Printer: > NeXT has presumably opened up the printing architecture with 2.0. > With an approriate printer driver, your NeXT machine should be > able to support any printer. Now, any volunteer to write a driver > for LaserJet? Really, now...You've already taken the first step in purchasing a top- notch printer (HP). You've also shown great intelligence in purchasing a NeXT computer. Now, take the next logical step: get a postscript cartridge for your Laserjet. They're not that expensive, and it makes life so wonderful. Just tell the NeXT you're using a Laserwriter, and things will be just fine. MikeC
Date: Sun 11-Jan-1991 12:20:16 From: rbp@investor.pgh.pa.us (Bob Peirce #305) Subject: Re: SUMMARY: NeXT Floppy Drive and Printer In article <1991Jan8.190343.3701@csn.org!datran2> smb@csn.org!datran2 writes: >In article <8033@hub.ucsb.edu> ye@henri.ucsb.edu (Hong Ye) writes: >>Laser Printer: >> With an approriate printer driver, your NeXT machine should be >> able to support any printer. Now, any volunteer to write a driver >> for LaserJet? > >This is certainly do-able. In fact Data Transforms has been writing >and selling printer drivers for bitmap printers for 10 years now. (We >don't all have the luxury of institutional support) I do have one >observation about this. The bitblasting printer port that connects >to the NeXT printer operates at speeds far exceeding those supported >by an RS232 laser printer. A full page bitmap at 300dpi is 7,560,000 >bits. This a little more than 13 minutes per page at 9600 baud. >Printers capable of 38.4kbaud will be able to get this down to a little >over 3 minutes per page. Thats a long wait. After you've waited a >half hour to get a 10 page document, the price of the NeXT printer >doesn't look so bad. Well, that depends. I would like a driver for an Epson 24 pin printer. I have joked that instead of 8 page/min it would be 8 min/page. It looks like that was optimistic. Nevertheless, for a home machine on a tight budget, where the need for high resolution graphics output is less frequent than just printing text, this is a reasonable option. If anybody ever writes this, I hope they will let me know.
These are the contents of the former NiCE NeXT User Group NeXTSTEP/OpenStep software archive, currently hosted by Marcel Waldvogel and Netfuture.ch.