Date: Fri, 29 May 1992 04:18:35 -0400 (EDT) From: Richard Sucgang Subject: Mac/LaserJet UpRev v1.1 This is an update to the current article in info-mac/report It should replace the file mac-laser-jet-up-rev.txt. The Mac/LaserJet UpRev is a review kept current which addresses the problem of using a Hewlett Packard LaserJet with Macintoshes, concentrating primarily on the original LaserJet series II. This is version 1.1, and is a major revision. More than twice the number of products are described and reviewed. -rich Richard Sucgang : Dept. of Anatomy and Cell Biology Columbia University (sucgang@cuhhca.hhmi.columbia.edu; de slime god rs54@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu) begin Mac/LaserJet UpRev v1.1: The Uneasy Marriage : using an HP LaserJet series II with a Macintosh Introduction: The LaserJet series II is a sturdily built machine, and many of the originals been humming along for quite some time. The one we have in the lab served us quite well for basic word processing with some PC clones for some years. With the arrival of the Macintosh IIsi, however, we were suddenly confronted with the problem of printing using the LaserJet. The option of purchasing a new printer was out of the question, and, in the process of determining the best solution for the current dilemma, I found out that there are many users in similar situations. This documents the different solutions I have found to using a LaserJet II (and other low end models) with a Macintosh in what I call an updatable review: a simple text document with version numbers to keep it up to date. This is version is 1.1, first released on May 28, 1992. There are many new revisions in this version, particularly descriptions of some new products, and very helpful responses from other people. While I probably did not expend much time programming this, I did spend quite some time researching and calling and writing to companies and reading to write this, so, if this up-rev has helped you, please drop me a line. If you have any further information, please forward them to me. Contact information at the end of this document. In the future, I plan to write this into a Hypercard stack, so hang in there! Background: The primary obstacle in getting older LaserJets to communicate with a Macintosh is that Macintoshes communicate with laser printers primarily using PostScript, Adobe's industry standard page description language, and Hewlett-Packard pioneered the use of PCL as the page description language of LaserJets. Officially, HP never intended the original LaserJet series II to interpret PostScript, and, in effect, do not really support it in this respect. HP makes PostScript cartridges as upgrades for the LaserJets IIP and IID, and distributes drivers for them. Call them at (800) 752-0900 (customer service), (208) 323-2551 (printer support), or (303) 353- 7650. Printer drivers are also available at Compuserve under GO HPPER. [thanks to Isako Hoshino (isako@mtl.mit.edu) for this information]. To start figuring out how to use our Mac IIsi with our LaserJet series II (the original, discontinued), I checked out a good review of connecting Macintoshes to LaserJets that was published in an early issue of MacUser (May, 1991). However, the review seemed to concentrate on the currently supported LaserJets (IIp, IId, III, etc.), and not the more vintage models. Further, opinions were light, and not as thorough as I would have liked. It does provide a good listing of company as sources of solutions. In addition to this, Tom Lane (Tom.Lane@g.gp.cs.cmu.edu) used to maintain a FAQ (fequently asked questions) list in sumex-aim.stanford.edu (36.44.0.6) as info-mac/report/hp-laserjet.txt which is still an excellent introduction and overview of the problems and solutions. Tom has kindly given me permission to use the article; I will be using excerpts throughout this version. Thank you, Tom! A LITTLE BACKGROUND: MAC PRINTER DRIVERS The key piece of Mac software for printing is a "printer driver". A printer driver takes drawing commands produced by a Mac application and translates them into commands understood by a printer. The icons you see when you open the Chooser DA correspond to different printer drivers. When you say "Print", the application sends its drawing commands to the printer driver currently selected by the Chooser; the printer driver in turn sends commands to the physical printer. This lets the application be independent of the printer you use (in theory, anyway). Mac applications can produce two kinds of drawing commands: Quickdraw commands and PostScript commands. All printer drivers accept Quickdraw commands, but interpreting PostScript commands requires a large and complex piece of software (the "PostScript interpreter", which is built into PostScript printers). Currently, printer drivers for PostScript printers simply pass PostScript drawing commands straight through to the printer; drivers for non-PostScript printers reject PostScript drawing commands altogether. Hence you cannot print PostScript images on non-PostScript printers. [Some printer drivers containing PostScript interpreters are starting to appear; one is "Freedom of Press" from Custom Applications. These interpreters are not real Adobe PostScript, and so probably have compatibility problems. I'd appreciate getting details on how well FoP and the others work.] Apple includes printer drivers for all its printers with the regular Mac system software. The Apple ImageWriter drivers and the LaserWriter IISC driver are each specific to one kind of printer (all of these are non-PostScript printers). But the regular LaserWriter driver can be used with any PostScript printer, because the PostScript printer command language is standardized. To use a non-Apple printer, you can either make it look like one of the Apple printers at the hardware level (and then use that Apple printer driver), or you can use a non-Apple printer driver that emits the right kind of commands for that printer. Products exist that take each of these approaches. Hardware-level approaches can be further broken down into "PostScript" and "other" (other being ImageWriter or IISC compatibles). The advantage of PostScript is that you get to use PostScript graphics. PostScript fonts used to be restricted to PS printers, but with the appearance of Adobe Type Manager (ATM), PS fonts can be used with other printers too; so that advantage is less significant than it used to be. VERY IMPORTANT FACT: Many Mac applications do not work very well with non-Apple printer drivers. (HyperCard and many Microsoft applications are particularly blatant offenders.) This is partly Apple's fault; they never published a well-defined standard for printer drivers. Because of this, if you have a compatibility problem between an application and a non-Apple printer driver, it's hard to fix the blame for the problem. In my experience, it's tough to get satisfaction from either the application's manufacturer or the printer driver's manufacturer; you tend to get finger-pointing on both sides. This is a very strong reason for taking the hardware-level adaptation approach; then you use an Apple driver, and you can blame the application if it has trouble printing. It is rumored that Apple is working on a new, better-documented printer driver definition. When that appears (at last report it will not be in time for System 7.0), compatibility problems should lessen, but not until application *and* printer driver writers revise their code to use the new definition. In the short run the new definition will probably create compatibility problems of its own --- another reason to stick to hardware-level solutions. [If anyone out there knows specifics about the new print architecture and can talk, I'd appreciate hearing about possible compatibility problems.] PRODUCTS THAT ARE IN THE MARKET Without resorting to PostScript, solutions generally involve converting QuickDraw images into TIFF equivalents, and transmitting this through the serial connection. This, of course, means that these solutions are very slow. When resorting to PostScript, there are two paths, either to interpret the code on the Mac, and transmit the resulting image as TIFF (even slower) or upgrading the hardware to include a PostScript interpreter. I have tried to provide as extensive a description of each of the products available. Unless indicated, I do not claim to have directly tested each product. As much as possible, though, I read the user manual, and correspond with the maker to make as accurate a summary as possible. Each product description/review is separated with two periods (..). The products described here are: QuickDraw: a. MacPrint b. Grappler c. MacJET and PacificConnect d. GDT JetLink Express PostScript: a. Freedom of Press Lite b. TScript c. HP PostScript cartridges d. Adobe's PostScript cartridge e. PacificPage and PacificConnect and/or PacificTalk f. BridgePort QuickDraw: .. A. MacPrint : I got this piece of software at an incredible $31 sale price from Mac's Place (800-367-4222); I doubt if it has remained at this price. MacPrint 1.2 is the version I used, and comes with drivers for a variety of non-Macintosh printers, including the LaserJet II, IIp, IId, LaserJet+, and other PCL printers, and the necessary DIN-8 to DB-25 connector for hooking up to the serial port of the LJ II. An upgrade to 1.3 has appeared since (although Insight has failed to inform me of the upgrade, take this as a hint about customer support), so some new features may have been added, most notably on the System 7 compatibility front. The manual was fairly easy to follow, although I think it fails to provide any usable technical information on the workings of the program. For example, an extremely useful piece of information that was missing was the pin configuration of the cable. Basically, the program claims to work by translating QuickDraw into PCL, first creating the raster image on the Mac, and transmitting it to the LaserJet. The user has the option of generating 75 dpi, 150 dpi or 300 dpi printouts (I guess screen, 24 pin dot matrix and laser printer resolutions), requiring progressively longer amounts of time to finish printing. Higher resolutions, then, come from scaling the page 4 fold to generate the 300 dpi output from a 72 dpi screen QuickDraw display. Bitmapped fonts can only be used if there is a size version 4x the size of the original; with the use of System 7 and TrueType, one could print fonts at any size with glee. The program *does* come with support for built in and cartridge supported fonts, and mixing fonts on the same page is possible. With increasing resolution comes increasing demands printer RAM; we had to upgrade to 2.5 Mb before full page graphics would print. With 512 Kb, usually the page would print until the current memory is full, at which time the printer will spit the unfinished page out, and finish it on another page. Using internal and cartridge fonts will lower the RAM requirement, but that wastes the wide array of fonts available for the Macintosh. We generally could make do with text, though, and 150 dpi is not too shabby. Paint objects, of course, print out at 72 dpi all the time, although draw graphics can print out at 300 dpi. As with all QuickDraw to TIFF translators, an interesting bug appears with fill patterns : as resolution goes up, fill patterns become smaller instead of just becoming higher in resolution. For example, a fill pattern of a dot every 16 dots in screen will print as a dot every 4 dots at 300 dpi. The biggest problem with MacPrint and similar software is that it really ties up your Mac. The program does not have its own background printing and does not indicate if 3rd party spoolers will work. I have not tested any. Known bug: the driver should be left in the *root* System folder under Sys 7.*. This could not be more strongly stressed. Many people curse and scream just because the smart System folder files it under Extensions, and the manual does not point out this flaw (actually, the manual does not make a lot of mention of System 7). Version 1.3 is the most current version, and I do not know if this has been fixed. In some ads (most notably, from MacZone or MacWareHouse), it is claimed that MacPrint does not need PostScript. Of course, since it does not SUPPORT PostScript. If you have ATM or TrueType, this is a good product for $31, tho. In general, it is a good product, with lots of fairly satisfied users, and pretty much bug free. It makes a good standby as a printer driver, although one should be prepared to wait awhile to get printouts. MacPrint : Published by Insight Development Corp., (415) 652 4115. Latest version : 1.3 MacConnection price, as of April, 1992: $92 .. B. Grappler Grappler is an external box that converts Apple ImageWriter print data into LJ commands. (There are Grappler versions for other popular printers too.) It uses the Apple "ImageWriter LQ" printer driver, but modifies the driver slightly so that it uses the correct page size and resolution for the printer. (For example, with an LJ a 300dpi image needs to be produced, not the 216dpi used by the ImageWriter LQ. Apparently the driver is written in such a way that this change is easy to make.) The data being sent to the printer is bitmaps, so speed leaves something to be desired, and you need adequate memory in the printer (Orange Micro recommends 1Mb minimum). There are currently two models of the Grappler, the 9pin for 9 pin dot matrix printers, and the IIsp, for 24 pin, inkjet and laser printers. I will disregard the 9pin; LaserJets can be used through the IIsp. I did not test a Grappler; the manufacturer, Orange Micro Inc., was kind enough to provide a copy of the user's manual. Strictly speaking, the Grappler is the cable itself that connects the serial port of the Mac to the parallel port of the LaserJet. It converts the serial signal to parallel at 57.6K baud; much higher than is possible with other QuickDraw solutions. It also has four TrueType fonts built in (Times, Helvetica, Courier and Symbol), which would speed up text printing. On the software side, as Tom mentioned, the Grappler modifies Apple's own ImageWriter LQ driver for use with different printers. In addition, Orange Micro also incorporates a spooler and support for AppleTalk networks. This is controlled from a cdev after choosing the ImageWriter LQ driver from the Chooser. It is possible to choose to use either the best (slowest) 300 dpi mode, faster (72 dpi) mode, or draft, which simply utilizes built in fonts in the LaserJet. There is no support for PostScript, although it is fully compatible with ATM. A combination hardware and software solution, the Grappler is one of the better products in the market in terms of bang for the buck. It is simple to use, and very well documented. By directing output to a parallel connection, sharing a LaserJet with PCs is a cinch with an external switchbox (HP's officially discourages the use of manual switchboxes which can generate current spikes; autoswitchers are okay). By introducing GrapplerShare, sharing with other Macs can be done via LocalTalk connections. The brief manual even describes the pinouts at both ends of the cable. I recommend it for people who want the easiest route to being able to use their LaserJets, without having to deal with too many technical details, and will not be wanting PostScript. The Grappler IIsp is made by Orange Micro, Inc., 1400 Lakeview Ave., Anaheim, CA 92807. (714)779-2772. Suggested list price : $159. .. C. MacJET and PacificConnect : Note: This is my current solution, and brought tons of relief from other members of the lab. PacificConnect is not normally recommended by Mac mavens, since it is usually classified as a DOS product. It is an optional I/O board for the LJ II, which provides the LJ with 4 serial connections via RJ-11 (telephone wire) jacks, and a parallel port (standard DB-25). The serial ports are configurable up to 115.2 K baud, although the Macintosh software only supports 9.6 K and 19.2 K baud (more on this later). It also comes with a built in buffer, with either 256Kb or 1.25Mb, and automatic switching between serial and parallel ports. The package came with what would be needed to connect 4 PC's and 1 Mac to the LaserJet, containing both long cables and adaptors to convert DIN 8/ DB 25/ DB 9 to RJ-11's. Initially, I had some problems with the hardware, which I traced to the RJ-11/Din 8 connector, but that was a minor story that was fairly easily resolved. For sharing PC's, the PacificConnect board is excellent, and has quite a number of similar competitors. What sets it apart is the software. The configuration and setup for the PC is fairly straightforward. For Macintoshes, two drivers were provided: MacJET, a QuickDraw driver written by Computer:Applications, and MacPage, the PostScript driver for use with the PacificPage PostScript emulation cartridge. In the absence of the cartridge, I was unable to test the MacPage software, although technical support assures me that only the PacificPage cartridge can be used with it. MacJET: This software was for a large part a mystery to me until recently. PDP's Customer Support insisted that it is incompatible with System 7 and TrueType, and generally were of no help with bugs. Recently, in a Boston trade journal, I noticed the announcement of a major upgrade to a product called MacJET, and remembered a similar announcement in MacWEEK a few months ago. I checked the manual, and, in small print, it acknowledges that the copyright of MacJET belonged to a company named Computer:Applications. Calling up PDP, it appears that they ship a version of it with every board, but do not support it thereafter; in fact, the manual does not indicate where to contact Computer:Applications, and PDP's technical support were even unsure who wrote the software, and how the licensing agreement is like! After an insistent phone call, I was called back, and given the phone number and address of Computer:Applications. It appears that PDP ships out MacJET version 2.3, and the the current shipping version is 3.2, and is fully System 7 compatible. While PDP does not seem to update this, owners of the PacificConnect board are eligible for upgrades at $29.95 plus shipping. As of this writing, I have sent for the upgrade, but I will give my impressions on version 2.3. MacJET comes in two pieces: a Chooser level driver, and a cdev to control it. The control panel sets the baud rate which the Macintosh communicates, which can be at 9600 or 19200 baud. It also controls how printer memory and fonts are handled. The driver comes with a set of PCL downloadable bitmapped fonts and it is possible to substitute fonts to speed up printing. Unfortunately, we found that this results in loss of WYSIWIG output, and that the downloadable did not contain the full LW set of characters, so special characters do not print. When fonts are not downloaded, MacJET images the whole page as a TIFF file, and downloads it as a graphic to the printer. This is slow in 300 dpi mode, but results are acceptable. Supposedly, the latest version is able to create downloadable fonts from TrueType, similar to what Windows 3.1 does. Color can be printed as grays, although I found this to be rather buggy. There is a 50% reduction option, as well as a draft mode which uses whatever default font the LaserJet is on. The driver can also use the built in line drawing routines in PCL4 of the LaserJet, which helps accelerate certain graphic printing. Since PDP did not write this software, it is not possible to configure the ports of the board using the Macintosh. Setting up the useable configuration requires a DOS based machine (I am unsure whether a SoftPC emulation will be sufficient.). The fact that at least one DOS based PC is required to configure ports is not explicitly stated is something I consider very misleading. In a mixed environment, switching between the different PCs is easy and requires minimum maintenance after initial configuration. The buffers automatically queues jobs, and prints them in order, although the slow output from the Mac can back things up significantly. In my opinion, PDP's customer support is somewhat weak; if you are at all technically proficient, you can fly circles around the tech support staff. It appears that technical support is geared more for Windows users, and not Macintoshes. Getting through on the phone is the first challenge; on the several occasions I called, I had to wait over 15 mins on hold before getting the operator - and this is NOT a toll free call. At least twice I was told that the person I was talking to did not have the necessary expertise to assist me on my question, and was promised a return call. No return calls were received. All in all, though, the board is a good solution for a mixed environment, since it effectively provides smart switching to the LaserJet II. It takes quite a bit of time to figure out the Macintosh side of it, though, since PDP does not seem to be particularly Mac friendly. As a hardware solution, the PacificConnect board is the best thing for a mixed environment; just choose a different software driver for the Mac. PacificConnect is made by Pacific Data Products, 619-552-0880. PC Connection May 1992 price is $275 for 256K buffer, and $349 for 1.25Mb. Buffer memory is upgradeable. MacJET is made by Computer:Applications, 12813 Lindley Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614. (919)846-1411. Upgrade price is $29.95 plus shipping with the return of the original program disks. Product does not seem to be carried by most mail-order companies. .. D. JetLink Express Note: I do not have any direct experience with GDT's products, and am expecting correspondence from them. Meanwhile, I will include an excerpt from Tom Lane's original article. Please note that this article is over a year old, and information may no longer be accurate. However, I think it still provides a good idea of what the product is like. JETLINK EXPRESS: JetLink Express (JLE) lists at $149 from GDT Softworks, (604) 291-9121; street price about $90. A Mac-to-LJ cable is included. JLE works by creating a bitmap image of the page to be printed, then dumping that into the printer. The trouble with this is that a full page at 300dpi is about 1 Megabyte of data, which takes a while to shove over a serial line. (You definitely want to be running the printer at its maximum 19200bps, not at 9600 which is all that some PCs can manage --- this may be a problem if you intend to switch the printer between PC and Mac.) GDT has put a lot of work into doing this as fast as possible; typical print times are two to four minutes per page, less if the page is only partly covered. If you are in a hurry you can work at 150 or even 75 dpi, which reduces the data volume and print time by a factor of 4 or 16, with a loss in print quality. (By now they may have an LJ III-specific driver that understands the III's graphic data compression options; that would speed things up too.) Aside from the speed problem, you need enough memory in the printer to hold the bitmap image (LJs have to store the entire page until it's printed, unlike some other printers such as DeskJets). This is not too much of a problem with the newer LJs, which come with 1Mb of memory standard. It is a problem with LJ Pluses, which have only 1/2 Mb and are not readily upgradable; but it turns out that JLE is pretty smart about not dumping white space, and this saves printer memory as well as time. I found that most 300dpi letter size pages would print on a Plus, although some rearrangement of the page was sometimes necessary to put the white space where JLE could take advantage of it. For densely printed or legal-size pages you may be forced to back off to 150dpi to avoid LJ Plus memory overflow. An original LJ has even less memory and is probably close to unusable with JLE. Text is imaged from Macintosh screen fonts, which means you get the jaggies unless you have large font sizes installed (you need 4x the screen size for best results at 300dpi). GDT has alleviated this problem by implementing scalable fonts inside their driver. JLE comes with scalable Times, Helvetica, Courier, and Symbol lookalike fonts, and you can buy more (basically the LaserWriter Plus font set) for $200. HOWEVER, there are bugs in their font handling. I found quite a lot of cases where what you saw on the screen was not what you got printed out, at least with the applications I was using (principally ReadySetGo). For example, "condensed" or "extended" text would be properly spaced only if it wasn't also bold or italic. I would recommend ignoring GDT's scalable fonts, and instead investing in Adobe Type Manager and PostScript fonts. This is slower than GDT's code, but has fewer bugs and gives you access to a vastly larger font library. You can squeeze out some additional speed by buying a serial-to-parallel converter box (about $90 from GDT). This is a win because LJs can accept graphics data through their parallel ports faster than through their serial ports. JLE can drive the Mac's serial port at speeds above 19200bps when it is mated to the converter. GDT claims this setup is 25% to 50% faster; I have not tried it. (Using parallel rather than serial can also simplify sharing the printer with a PC; just add a parallel A/B switch box. HP recommends against mechanical switch boxes, but electronic ones are safe.) I have not found any print spoolers that work with JLE. (SuperLaserSpool's latest version is claimed to, by GDT, but does NOT work reliably in my experience.) There are some application compatibility problems, but most seem related to GDT's scalable fonts, and would probably go away if you used ATM instead. My really big gripe is that GDT does not fix reported bugs, even when you tell them exactly what the problem is and where (I spent some time disassembling their driver for my own amusement). After waiting 6 months and paying for an upgrade I would sure as hell expect to get a fix... GDT has recently released version 2.0 of JLE; this version may or may not improve the bug/compatibility situation. .. PostScript: .. A. Freedom of Press Lite : FoP is a PostScript emulator; it redirects the LaserWriter driver to generate a PostScript file, which is written to disk, and is interpreted by the Mac to create a raster which is then downloaded to the printer. In addition to downloading a TIFF image through a serial line, FoP incorporates time it takes to use the Mac to interpret PostScript code - the result : the thing is slower than a clogged toilet. In the time I tried it, I frequently had to leave the thing to print overnight. It came with no cables; and did not provide sources for cables. Since FoP intercepts PostScript output from the LaserWriter driver to interpret it, spooling actually means that under MultiFinder there will be two applications running in the background: PrintMonitor and FoP. This results in a tremendous performance hit even with fairly large areas of memory. Since TIFF files are initially written to disk, FoP requires tons of memory, for volatile and disk; with FoP and System 7 running, you'd need at least 10 Mb of RAM, and another 5-10 Mb on disk free to function passably (personally, I don't know how this will affect disk fragmentation). FoP Lite comes with 17 of the LaserWriter fonts, but I found them to be of very poor quality. Recommendation: if there is sufficient disk space, use in the few times with a PostScript graphic output is desired. Otherwise, it is more prudent to upgrade to a hardware based PostScript upgrade. Freedom of Press Lite is made by Custom Applications, 800-873-4367, latest version is 3.03. Mac's Place May 1992 price is $88. .. B. TScript TScript is the major competitor to FoP as a software based PostScript interpreter, and is in many ways similar. I do not have direct experience with using it; I rely on information sent to me by the manufacturers. Like FoP, TScript comes in several incremental "models" : Basic, which is the vanilla module capable of interpreting and printing PostScript output, as well as editing and previewing it. The next step up, TScript v. 3.0, provides the ability to convert PostScript into TIFF files, and the Deluxe features conversion to 2000 dpi TIFF files, and multiple PostScript page preview. The literature seems to indicate that no hardware comes with the software to connect the computer and the printer; TeleTypesetting also offers parallel connectors T-Link and T-Card. With an installed parallel interface card, output is claimed to be on par with a LaserWriter when printed through a Macintosh II with a math coprocessor. Optimal conditions is said to be at least 5 Mb of RAM. At least a Mb is required on the LaserJet side. Impressions: The hardware requirements for interpreting PostScript in software is generally large, to the extent that it may be more feasible to get the hardware upgrade. TScript's high end PostScript manipulation capabilities, however, point to its uses beyond simply acting as a LaserJet driver for the Macintosh. In the interest of economy, TScript may not be the most comfortable choice to make, but may the cheapest way to access and print PostScript. Even with a PostScript printer, one does not have the same advantage with PostScript previewing. TScript Basic, TScript, and TScript Deluxe are made by TeleTypeSetting, 474 Commonwealth Ave., Boston, MA 02215. phone (617)734-9700. fax (617)734-3974. Suggested retail prices are $85, $145 and $495 respectively. There is a 35% academic discount on quantities of three. Available from most dealers and mail order companies. .. C. and D. Hewlett-Packard and Adobe's PostScript cartridges for LaserJets All PostScript interpreters require at least 2 Mb of RAM on the printer side; the original 512K will not be sufficient. Furthermore, the series I printers: the original LaserJet, the Plus and the Plus 500, cannot be upgraded. For those, PostScript solutions are stuck as software. For the series II and above, though, there are a variety of hardware upgrades in the form of PostScript cartidges and emulator cartridges. As I do not have direct experience with the HP and Adobe products, I shall include excerpts from Tom Lane's 1990 article. Again, note that prices and details may not be accurate. HP'S POSTSCRIPT CARTRIDGE: HP Part Number 33439P, lists at $695; street price about $550. This contains a genuine Adobe PostScript interpreter, version 52.2. The cartridge works in LJ IId, IIp, and all Series III models, but *not* in the original Series II LJ. (See the Adobe cartridge if you have a II.) You'll also need extra printer memory, as noted above. 2Mb extra is recommended (4Mb extra for a IId or IIId; double-sided printing does not work with less). You might need even more memory if you use *lots* of downloaded PostScript fonts. (I've had no trouble printing font sample documents with a dozen or more downloaded fonts, so I think that 2Mb will satisfy all normal needs.) If you want to connect the printer using AppleTalk protocol, you'll need an AppleTalk Interface Kit, HP part # 33416A; list price is $275, street price about $220. (I bought one of the first ones off the assembly line; street price may have fallen by now. The same may be true of the PS cart itself.) If you need to save some money, you can use a slower RS232 connection: instead of the AT interface kit, buy APDA's item M7601 "Asynchronous LaserWriter Driver" for $20. (There's also a one time membership charge to join APDA. If anyone knows the current fee and how to join, please let me know for inclusion here.) The APDA driver doesn't know anything about printer features that aren't in Apple LaserWriters, such as the double sided printing capability of the IId and IIId; otherwise it should work OK. NOTE: this driver calls itself v4.0, but apparently it is based on v6.0 of the standard driver; so it's not as out of date as you might think from the number. Finally, you need to buy a cable. If you go the AppleTalk route, you can buy AppleTalk cabling (expensive, but necessary if you want to network the printer to more than one Mac); or if you have just one Mac, you can buy a plain "null modem" cable. (Your Apple dealer will sell you one if you ask for an ImageWriter II cable; they're about $10.) NOTE: for safety with the cheaper cable, you should be sure the Mac and printer are both plugged into the same power outlet. The main reason AppleTalk is so expensive is that there are isolation transformers in the cabling. You don't need these if you have only one Mac and one printer and they are on the same power circuit. [I don't know what kind of cable is required to hook up an RS232 connection; probably this info is in the APDA driver documentation, but details would be appreciated. HP does *not* provide any cable with the printer.] If you buy the AppleTalk card, you also get a customized version of the Apple LaserWriter printer driver; however, you can use the regular Apple driver if you want to. The customized driver is mainly useful for getting at specialized features, such as double-sided printing on the IId or changing resolution enhancement settings on a III. With a IIp you might as well use the Apple driver. (I've found some applications that work OK with the Apple driver but not with the HP driver: DesignStudio 1.0, Multiplan 1.0, MS Word 3.0. SuperLaserSpool seems to have problems with the HP driver too.) This combo gives you the functional equivalent of a LaserWriter IINT, although benchmarks recently reported in MacUser (Oct. 90 issue) make it look a bit slower than a IINT on complex graphics (straight text printing is as fast or faster than the IINT). I detect considerable anti-HP bias in the text of the MacUser review [in particular, their statements about LJ III print quality are way out of line with my experience], but I don't think they fudged the timing numbers. The HP PS cartridge is a solid, user-friendly implementation. For example, you can enable or disable the power-up test page from the front panel, instead of having to send an arcane bit of PostScript. Since the PS interpreter is by Adobe, it should have no deviations from the de facto PS standard. One shortcoming of the HP cart is that to switch between PostScript and native HP mode, you have to power down the printer and insert or remove the PS cart. This is very easy, but since you have to wait through the power-up selftest, the elapsed time to swap is a couple of minutes. This is not a big problem unless you want to share the printer with a PC on a daily basis. Also note that any HP-type fonts built into the printer are totally ignored by the PS cartridge; conversely, you can't use PS fonts in HP mode. ADOBE'S POSTSCRIPT CARTRIDGE: Adobe offers a PostScript cartridge for the original (now discontinued) Series II LJ. This cart does *not* work in the IId, IIp, or Series III models. (Adobe and HP evidently have an agreement not to tread on each other's toes here, as the HP cartridge works in exactly the printers Adobe's doesn't.) I believe street price for this cartridge is about $300. It comes with a bunch of info and programs for use with IBM PCs, but with *nothing* for Macs. Hence you need to buy the APDA serial-LaserWriter printer driver and a cable; see above for more info about this driver. (As far as I know, you cannot use the HP AppleTalk interface with this cartridge.) You must also buy at least 1.5Mb add-on memory; see above for purchase recommendations. At least one person has reported that he was unable to make this configuration work with a IIcx; I never heard if he resolved the problem. It seems pretty clear that Adobe is marketing this cartridge primarily to the PC universe, and that they have not put together a plug-and-play solution for the Mac. Once they have finished writing their own PostScript printer driver (a project announced to the net some months ago), they may package it with this cartridge and provide a tidier solution. This cart allows programmable switching between PS and HP modes, unlike HP's cart. Like the PDP cart (below), the switch entails a powerup self test cycle, so it is pretty slow and any characters sent meanwhile will be lost. Further reports from users would be appreciated. E. PacificPage, PacificTalk and PacificConnect For a description of PacificConnect, see the QuickDraw section. PacificPage is PDP's PostScript emulation cartridge, and comes in two flavors: PacificPageII for the LaserJet II, and PacificPagePE for the IId and above. The main advantage to choosing these cartridges is price. In the case ofthe LaserJet II, this is the only alternative to choosing and fiddling with Adobe's cartridge. The cartridge comes with the standard 35 Apple LaserWriter fonts, and, in the case of the PacificPageII, a 2 Mb memory expansion board. To connect the Mac to the LaserJet, either the PacificConnect board (see above) or a PacificTalk (AppleTalk clone) interface can be used. One of the more exciting upgrades available is the XL board to be used in conjunction with the PacificPage cartridge. Formerly only available for the PE, it is now also available for the II, and is a RISC based accelerator reportedly supercharges the LaserJets for a minimal price (Byte reported the PE/XL combination as listing for $999, and named it honorable mention as one of the best products of the year). The XL board comes with its own onboard memory, and fits into the optional memory slot of the LaserJet II. I was scheduled to be a beta tester for the II/XL board, but beta testing was cancelled. Nonetheless, PDP just began shipping it, and I will be receiving one soon, whereupon I can formulate a better review. PacificConnect, PacificTalk, PacificPage (PE, II, XL) are made by Pacific Data Products, 619-552-0880. .. F. BridgePort BridgePort is the general name used by a large selection of printer-sharing products made by Extended Systems. The list is long and varied, with solutions for a large number of possible computer combinations. I presented ES technical support with the scenario of using a LaserJet II with a Macintosh, and the answer is the BridgePort model ESI-2679B, and they were kind enough to send me a user manual, literature answering my questions and describing most of the BridgePort line. The ESI-2679B is basically an externally powered smart port. It connects to a PostScript printer via either a parallel or a serial connection (with Macs, a serial connection is recommended), and recieves data through its serial, parallel and AppleTalk ports. A PostScript printer is absolutely necessary; the LaserJet II can be configured with either the Adobe or the PacificPage cartridges. The BridgePort offers intelligent communication; it is unnecessary to worry about hardware specific software. Standard system printer drivers (the LaserWriter driver) can be used. The switching is transparent, and the box is designed to be forgotten. I have received testimony to the ease of use of the BridgePort product. There are some quirks with maintenance since the BridgePort box is independent of the LaserJet's power supply, but none of it should be of much concern. If PostScript is already installed on the LaserJet, the BridgePort is the most feasible way to get a Macintosh working with the least amount of hassle. Plus a mixed environment can still be maintained. The product is also well documented, complete with pinout and power diagrams. The BridgePort ESI-2679 is made by Extended Systems, 6123 N. Meeker Ave., Boise, Idaho 83704. phone (800)235-7576, fax (208)377-1906. List price $495, with a 40% academic discount for a limited time. Extended Systems also makes a wide variety of printer accesories and products which may be of interest to people managing mixed environments, as well as large printer-sharing networks. On the side... I received the following from Sascha Segan: From: Sascha Segan Subject: Re: Printing to a LaserJet II/Pacific Page with a mac To: Richard Sucgang In-Reply-To: Your message of Tue, 5 May 92 21:04:36 EDT The JetWriter is a combination effort between Extended and Insight - a hybrid hardware/software product. It essentially uses a serial/parallel converter and a modified version of the MacPrint drivers for optimal performance. The two components of the JW are a board and software (the system is *only* usable with the LJ IIP.) The board snaps in place of the IIP's standard I/O plate ina five-minute, no-fuss procedure, replacing the parallel and serial ports with an Appletalk port. The software is, for all intents and purposes, MacPrint; it works identically, and identically well. The only program I have found that will absolutely not print with the JW is Quark XPress 3.0. Speed varies wildly. I'm running a 2.5MB Mac SE; remember that. Under System 6.07 with Finder, things print swiftly and in magnificently high quality; you essentially have a Personal LW SC. Under MultiFinder or System 7, however, performance degrades. Under MF, I essentially get one page/minute or so. Under System 7, the product is utterly unusable. The hardware requirements are simply that the IIP have 1.5 MB of RAM. While an Appletalk printer, the JW cannot work on a network; it is a single-machine printer. I bought the JW board and software a year ago at Computer Factory here in Manhattan for $293. Prices may have changed. ----Sascha ------------------------------------------------------------ Here are my personal choices: 1. QuickDraw driver : MacPrint 2. Cheapest way to share a LaserJet : PacificConnect 3. Best PostScript solution : PacificPage XL 4. Best way to share PostScript : BridgePort Without PostScript, the pickings are pretty meager, and with the prices of PostScript Level 2 printers coming down, my original recommendation was to sell the LaserJet II, and use the money to purchase something like the NEC SilentWriter. After reviewing the choices here, however, that recommendation may not be absolute. Under certain conditions (such as a single Mac Plus and a LaserJet) replacing the LaserJet may be the best route, but in other conditions, particularly in mixed environment, the trusty LJII may still have miles to go before it sleeps. Many thanks to everyone who sent in their suggestions and comments. This Up-Rev, v1.1 was written by Richard Sucgang, May 28, 1992. Primary archival sites are sumex-aim.stanford.edu (36.44.0.6), and all sites that subscribe to the macgifts program. Please forward all comments and questions to the following: E-mail : rs54@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu; sucgang@cuhhca.hhmi.columbia.edu. voice: (212) 305 1512 SnailMail: Dept. of Anatomy and Cell Biology, Columbia University in the City of New York 630 W 168th St., New York, NY 10032, USA