Hi,
A few days ago I asked :
In our campus we want buy a printer to use both from win95 based PCs and
both from a Digital Unix box for .ps printing via ethernet. Can you give
any advise in buying printer ? name,type etc? A seller advised above card,
do you have any idea ?
- o -
As always many great answers came; thanx to :
Steffen Kluge <kluge_at_ave.ac.agit.de>
Schuhl, Robert <robert.schuhl_at_ald-vt.de>
Andreas Lundgren <atoalu2_at_ato.abb.se>
marco_at_gore.afep.cornell.edu
Robert J. Budden <rbudden_at_mailhub.wpl.com>
Dan Bowman <dbowman_at_sph.jhu.edu>
Hans Ullitz <hum_at_biobase.dk>
Victor M.J. Ryden <RYDEN_at_scag.ca.gov>
WHITTAKER, Bruce J <bjw_at_anpnt22.anp.ansto.gov.au>
Kevin Behrooz <behrooz_at_rudolf.nscl.msu.edu>
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As you will see many idea and experience available below, we will consider
them and make a decision. Thanx for all.
Sincerely.
murat.
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Steffen Kluge <kluge_at_ave.ac.agit.de>
Hi Murat,
consider buying a Lantronix MPS1 Micro Printserver. It connects to
the printer's parallel Centronics port and supports AppleTalk, LAN
Manager, LAT, LPR, RTEL and Netware printing simultaneously. We use
it for printing from VMS machines (LAT) and DU/Ultrix workstations
(RTEL). The RTEL (reverse telnet) software that comes with the print
server (C source) builds and installs easily. Adding a printer definition
to /etc/printcap is a matter of a minute with the contained config
utility - and it works from the beginning on!
The MPS1 has its own queueing and special support for postscript
printers. Considering the numerous posts on this list regarding
problems with JetDirect cards setup, this little beast is really
plug-and-play and it never caused any problems so far.
BTW I'm not related with Lantronix in any way ;-))
Hope This Helps
Steffen.
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"Schuhl, Robert" <robert.schuhl_at_ald-vt.de>
Hi!
we use HP 4SiMX and 4M printers with JetDirect Cards. Works fine.
Robert
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Andreas Lundgren <atoalu2_at_ato.abb.se>
QMS printers. Specific model depend on how heavy use you will want to put
on
it.
We use QMS 1660Ex PrintServers and are very happy with them. Really fast
printers that work best in a big network.
//Andreas
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marco_at_gore.afep.cornell.edu
Not that I have much experience with printers but:
We have an Apple Laserwriter 16/600 PS connected to our network. We haveDec
Unix boxes and Mac's printing to it. It has 600 dpi and about 10 ppm.
Every i=one here likes it. Marco.
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"Robert J. Budden" <rbudden_at_mailhub.wpl.com>
You may want to check out XCD network cards. These cards auto sense a
postscript versus a text file and prints the file in the correct format.We
are using HP Jetdirect cards which require us to have 2 queues in our printcap
file one for text and the other for graphics (bummer). I believe that the XCD
cards are now manageable via Jetadmin. We had purchased a couple of cards from
Icon Resources (312-573-0142) Rick Kosta.
- o -
Dan Bowman <dbowman_at_sph.jhu.edu>
I am using such a configuration. The unfortunate part is that the HP
JetAdmin utility is not ported to the DU platform. I'm using two SUN
Sparc4's to serve as bootp servers for the HP printers and I'm using the
admin tool from the SUN's to set them up, (assigning host name, IP's
etc.).
You may want to get a print script called " genscript " for banner pages.
You'll need to do a bit of altering to make it produce headers that you like
but it works very well. I can't remember the name of the ftp site where I
found this. (Maybe someone in the group would know?)
You can configure the DU server to act as a bootp server but you will need
to get the image file that is downloaded to the HP printer from HP. (Good
luck, HP has been very unreceptive with me so far. Even after I waved a
$30K printer purchase in front of them.) I'm buying Xerox printers for our
Labs. Xerox has proven the ability to make our machines serve as the bootp
servers with the download image file. Their admin tool is likewise not
ported to DU but there are other ways around this like telneting directly to
the printer and configuring the card the hard way. Don't despair though,
it's all possible with some time and patience and a few calls to Digital
support.
Feel free to email other questions on this subject.
- o -
Hans Ullitz <hum_at_biobase.dk>
We have printer queues for HP printers with HP jetdirect card and it
works fine, when first it is set up properly, from UNIX or WinNT.
But only from UNIX and WinNT.
There is NO - absolutely NO - way that you access a printer
directly on the net from Win95. The printer MUST be attached the
parallel port of some Win95 PC or through a printer queue
on a WinNT PC that accesses the printer ON THE NET (or on a paralell
port). There are several tools included with Win95 for accessing
printers ON THE NET (even a "HPjetadmin"), but they do not work!
Not at all.
At least for the version of Win95 (aug95) og Win95 that we have.
So on a Win95 PC a printer must be either directly attached to the
parallel port of the PC (can then be shared for other Win95 PC's)
or accesses as a shared printer on another Win95 or WinNT PC.
The procedure for installing a printer (with jetdirect card) on the
net for use from a WinNT PC is not documented, but I can tell you
how to do it, if you need it.
Regards
Hans Ullitz-Moeler
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"Victor M.J. Ryden" <RYDEN_at_scag.ca.gov>
XCD makes a print server that will talk both DEC and IPX and TCP/IP.
VmjR - Operations - Supporting those who Plan The Region.
Southern California Association of Governments
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"WHITTAKER, Bruce J" <bjw_at_anpnt22.anp.ansto.gov.au>
we use the JetDirect cards from both PC and from UNIX and they seem OK. The
only real painin the arse that I wish that HP would fix is that they won't
interpret a newline character from UNIX. The means that while we can print
postscript fine the ASCII comes out wrong unless we use a filter of some
sort to change newlines to carriage return/line feeds. Some people report
setting rp to RAW in the printcap file to get around it but I don't know if
that means that they use two printer queues for it or not.
There are no problems from the PC side that I am aware of.
This is a very common card so there should be help available to you on this
newsgroup but I haven't used other cards so I can't give you a good
comparison.
Bruce Whittaker.
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Kevin Behrooz <behrooz_at_rudolf.nscl.msu.edu>
We have a whole bunch of printers with HP Jetdirect cards and they
seem to work O.K. with our PCs, Unix boxes, Macs and VMS. The
only problem is that writing filters for DU to work with these
cards is not trivial. But if you use simple postscript printing,
it should work out ok for you.
//
--
Murat Balci UNIX sys. Admin http://bornova.ege.edu.tr/~balci
s-mail : Ege Universitesi B.A.U.M - Bornova, IZMIR, TURKIYE.
e-mail : balci_at_bornova.ege.edu.tr Phone :+(90)(232)3881080-253
Received on Wed Jun 05 1996 - 08:25:52 NZST