Re: Mac/PC help w/laserwriter

Peter Mannheim(pm-fosco[at]dircon.co.uk)
Tue, 14 Jul 1998 00:31:30 +0200

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FWIW, I have a LaserWriter IINTX, and i can make it work with Virtual PC
(obviously) - but I can also make it work directly from a PC using its
COM1-style serial port and I can even set dipswitches on it to make it
become a PCL-style printer ( when it would disappear from the Chooser if it
were also connected to a Mac.) Now, there is a lot of data in Apple's
Technical Information Library about setting various LaserWriters to work
with PCs - I suppose am "lucky" in that my IINTX was built when Apple
could seriously hope that PC printer users might install a LocalTalk card
in their PC and print through it. If there is NOTHING in Apple's TIL about
making your 4/600PS work with a PC, then you are a victim of the
price-competitive unbundling that all printer manufacturers do nowadays to
hit certain price points - and conversely if there is.....

I have a printer question of my own that no-one at Connectix can help to
answer:- I am developing a program in Visual Basic 5 but using Virtual PC
on my G3, and I need to drive both Postscript and PCL printers to test the
program - and so I don't need to plug the "PC printer" into a non-existent
COM1 port because the IINTX can accept PCL via the AppleTalk port - BUT -
if I put my IINTX into PCL mode it disappears from my Chooser, but
unfortunately VPC just hands off the print requests to the current Chooser
printer, so I cannot test the IINTX in PCL mode...
Does anyone know if SoftWindows is any better - it is a lot of fuss
switching the IINTX over to PCL and then firing PCL commands at it through
the "Virtual COM Port" - so I would be grateful for any ideas on the
subject (incidentally, setting the printer model in VPC's version of
Windows95 to Mac LaserWriter not Mac Postscript LaserWriter still hands off
commands to a Postscript printer AFAIK - if anyone knows any cheaper
solution than buying a Pentium PCI card, I would be very grateful...

Peter Mannheim

• Next message: Darryl Lee: "Dancing/Jumping Icons (Was: Re: NT server/ apple client)"
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• In reply to: Ephraim Fithian: "PCMacLan on VPC"
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