Richard Rinehart              | University Art Museum / Pacific Film Archive
Information Systems Manager   | University of California at Berkeley
rineh...@uclink2.berkeley.edu | 2625 Durant, Berkeley, CA 94720-2250

Update: Mr. Bartsch just enlightened me to this list.  I'll give it a try.

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In 1987, I designed a "film recording facility" here at the NASA Johnson
Space Center that would provide institutional film recording support for JSC
in the form of business, scientific, and engineering graphics.  I started
off with a Lasergraphics MFR film recorder -- which used an RS-232 serial
port for input.  A year later I traded that in on a Lasergraphics LFR film
recorder which had both SCSI and parallel interfaces.  A year after that I
added a Matrix QCRZ and another Lasergraphics LFR.  About two years later I
"upgraded" both Lasergraphics LFR film recorders to LFR Plus film recorders.
 This year I ditched the old Matrix QCRZ for a Management Graphics 16XPS
film recorder.

The new Management Graphics can image up to 16,384 pixels on a long edge
(4x5 = 16,384 x 13,107 pixels).  It is very fast and accurate, but it is
expensive -- about US$70,000.  The Lasergraphics LFR Plus film recorders are
about US$9,000 for a "dual host" model -- one that has both SCSI and
high-speed parallel interfaces to allow a Macintosh or Sun and a PC to
simultaneously interface the film recorder.  The Lasergraphics film
recorders are very easy to work with.  Their interface software for
Macintosh, Windows, and Sun is excellent in terms ease of use and
functionality.  Working with most other film recorders is not as easy as
with the Lasergraphics.  Also, film backs -- such as a 4x5 sheet film,
120/220, or bulk capacity (long-roll) 35mm -- are less expensive for the
Lasergraphics than those for Agfa/Matrix or Management Graphics, in that the
RGB color filter wheel and calibrating electronics are not integrated into
each film back, but inside the film recorder.  Lasergraphics also has a
relatively new 8,000-line film recorder called the Mark III.  It is quite
fast.  The same film backs that fit a LFR or LFR Plus also fit a Mark III.
 Lasergraphics also sells an affordable external rasterizer called the RISC
Rascol, which can have a dual-host option (SCSI & high-speed parallel) or an
upcoming Adobe PostScript Level-2 interpreter.  It uses two microprocessors
inside: A Motorola 68000 for handling communications and spooling on its
internal hard drive, and a 20MHz or optional 40MHz MIPS R3000 RISC processor
to perform RIPping -- and believe me, it can rip!  For imaging slides from a
Macintosh/Quadra and/or PC running Windows/Windows for Workgroups in a low
to medium volume environment, an LFR Plus and a RISC Rascol work quite well.
 With a LFR Plus film recorder and a RISC Rascol you can interface up to two
Macintoshes and several PC systems;  one Mac connects to the LFR's SCSI
port, another Mac connects to the RISC Rascol that is connected to the LFR's
parallel port, and several (I have four) PC's can connect to a parallel
printer switching box that could feed data to the RISC Rascol's parallel
input port.  If you need to image exacting 4x5 artwork, the Lasergraphics
LFR Plus starts to fall a bit out of the race.  I haven't seen high-res art
work from the new Lasergraphics Mark III, but it probably doesn't compare
with what you can do at the same resolution (8K-lines) on the Management
Graphics or Celco film recorders because of their CRT size.  Speaking of
Celco, they have 16K-line, 32K-line, and 64K-line CRT-based film recorders.
 They are all very much hyper-expensive devices!

 -Gary H-

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GHEND...@JA2.JSC.NASA.GOV
NASA / Johnson Space Center,  Image Services Branch Digital Imaging
Laboratory
Gary L. Hendershot,  (713) 483-2144
NASA / JSC, Building 8, Room 244, PS4 / RMS,
Houston, TX  77058-3691   USA
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