Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!rutgers!mit-eddie!mit-hermes!phr From: phr@mit-hermes.AI.MIT.EDU (Paul Rubin) Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st Subject: Re: News Announcement!!! ($1500 laser printer) Message-ID: <2777@mit-hermes.AI.MIT.EDU> Date: Sat, 10-Jan-87 02:03:51 EST Article-I.D.: mit-herm.2777 Posted: Sat Jan 10 02:03:51 1987 Date-Received: Sat, 10-Jan-87 06:22:16 EST References: <870109212520.0000099C.AONM.MA@UMass> Reply-To: phr@hermes.UUCP (Paul Rubin) Organization: The MIT AI Lab, Cambridge, MA Lines: 26 Summary: controller absence a blessing? In article <870109212520.0000099C.AONM.MA@UMass> Flash@UMass.BITNET (Rick Flashman) writes: >o Also announced was a new laser printer. ($1500) It has no controller > and is software driven from the ST. "prototype" so prepare to wait > for this one. Another mention seems to say that you need a 2 meg > ST to be able to run it. Hmmm, considering that laser printers > WITH a controller sell for $1,895 and Apple is coming out with a > "mini" printer for $2,000 with a controller. I think Atari might > either lower the price a bit, or add a controller. At the moment I don't know of any inexpensive laser printers that let you load a full page bitmap at full resolution. You need a megabyte of memory to do this, and most of the cheap printers around (HP LJ+, etc.) come with 1/2 a megabyte. At current DRAM prices this seems like marketroid- induced insanity, but who knows why they do it. In any case, I welcome a printer that doesn't think it knows better than I do what I want to print on the page. (Has anyone used the Tall Trees JLASER card? This is a board that plugs into a PC backplane and drives the LBP-CX video interface directly. I gather you have to lobotomize your printer by cutting a few wires (bypassing the controller) in order to use it.) While we're on the subject, does anyone know a cheap (<$500) dot matrix printer with good dot resolution (e.g. 24 pin head) that lets you print full resolution graphics at full speed? The NEC Pinwriter P6 is a possibility if you can stuff bits into the parallel port fast enough. Has anyone seen this done? I want to have a cheap and dirty way of printing .dvi (TeX output) files.