Laser printer to use with a Apple IIc

[johnd]

Looking for a laser printer to work with a Apple IIc, would a Personal
Laserwriter 300 or a 320 be possible?

[Kevin Dady]

On Oct 1, 4:26 am, johnd <panpanpan...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Looking for a laser printer to work with a Apple IIc, would a Personal
> Laserwriter 300 or a 320 be possible?

I have used a HP laser printer with a serial port to just print text
(no gfx) the PL300 has a serial interface ... if you want to dump some
text files to paper and already have the printer you should try, have
no idea about graphics printing though

[Jerry]

For years, Don Lancaster used an Apple IIe to print stuff to various
LaserWriters using Postscript. What he used was Apple Writer IIe and
a serial port. He published magazine articles and books, both included
schematic diagrams and other assorted diagrams. So graphics were
definitely possible.

I believe he wrote his Postscript code more or less by hand, or by using
the WPL (word processing language) builtin to Apple Writer to generate
it. Perhaps there are some articles by him available on his web-site,
www.tinaja.com, that would help you out.

--
Jerry awanderin at yahoo dot ca

[Tony Kavadias]

> it.  Perhaps there are some articles by him available on his web-site,www.tinaja.com, that would help you out.

>
> --
> Jerry    awanderin at yahoo dot ca

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that while it is possible to
print to a LaserWriter from an Apple IIGS to a LocalTalk-networked
LaserWriter printer (Plus, IINT, IINTX, Personal NT, etc.), you cannot
get an Apple II to print to any of these printers using a parallel or
serial cable, because the only two interfaces you can use to print to
any one LaserWriter is either a LocalTalk network cable or a SCSI
cable. There is no support in Apple's printers to accept a
Centronics parallel or RS-232/RS-422 serial connection, making it
impossible to connect these printers to Apple II computers via any
other interface apart from LocalTalk.

(Caveat: anyone tried connecting an Apple IIe to a LaserWriter IINT
via the Workstation Card? That's the only thing I can recognise that
will work, but I never personally tried it.)

There is also no system software support for the Apple II to print to
a LaserWriter IISC or Personal SC printer either, so SCSI-based
printing is also a no-go.

Even if you do manage to connect an Apple II to a LocalTalk
LaserWriter printer, you need to either write PostScript out to the
printer, or use IWEM (the ImageWriter Emulator). An Apple IIe or
Apple IIGS has to upload the IWEM over to the LaserWriter before 8-bit
applications can print to the printer... but when the LaserWriter is
prep'd, any program that knows how to print to an AppleTalk
ImageWriter II can also talk to a LaserWriter, where the output is
intended to be either in Courier (monospace) or Times (proportional)
font for text output, or in emulated ImageWriter graphics output,
albeit in monochrome.

The Apple IIGS system software automatically uploads the IWEM when the
system discovers a LaserWriter on the LocalTalk network via the
Chooser, but the Apple IIe needs to run a tool which will upload the
IWEM to the printer. Then, it's just a matter of sending ImageWriter
print data (the usual text and control codes) through to the AppleTalk
interface on the Apple II.

Note that the ImageWriter printer driver on the Apple IIGS does not
work with the IWEM (the ImageWriter driver flat-out refuses), and in
most instances anyway, it'd be better to use the LaserWriter driver
instead and deal with printing "natively", so to speak.

That's as far as LaserWriter printing ever got to on the Apple II.

And sorry to say, I don't know of any third-party solutions to this
problem. Perhaps others can shed more light on this for us!


--tonza

[Tony Kavadias]

On Oct 2, 2:02 am, Jerry <awande...@yahoo.ca> wrote:

> it.  Perhaps there are some articles by him available on his web-site,www.tinaja.com, that would help you out.

>
> --
> Jerry    awanderin at yahoo dot ca

Umm... sorry to follow up, but I think the Apple LaserWriter and
LaserWriter Plus were the only printers that featured a serial port...
where you could send PostScript data to it.

However, the IWEM is not supported through this port on the two
printers.


--tonza

[Tony Kavadias]

> it.  Perhaps there are some articles by him available on his web-site,www.tinaja.com, that would help you out.

>
> --
> Jerry    awanderin at yahoo dot ca

And before I shoot my own foot off... I just read up that the Personal
300/LS, Select 300|310|360, Pro 600|630|640|810 and Color LaserWriter
all supported serial ports... when Apple decided to make their
products more "open" in the marketplace.

My bad... and no, never even seen these printers, let alone try
printing PostScript through to them!
Begging your pardon on this one.


--tonza

[Charlie]

There are several "Apple IIe & Apple IIgs to LaserWriter" articles on
that site including this one:

http://www.tinaja.com/glib/pssecrets.pdf

Charlie

[mdj]

On Oct 2, 11:26 pm, Tony Kavadias <tonza...@gmail.com> wrote:

> (Caveat: anyone tried connecting an Apple IIe to a LaserWriter IINT
> via the Workstation Card?  That's the only thing I can recognise that
> will work, but I never personally tried it.)

Yes - this is exactly what a Workstation Card is for - Once a printer
is chosen through the "Chooser" The Workstation Card appears as a
Super Serial Card, and can be used as a printer by any application
that supports the SSC+IW combo (essentially everything). It takes care
of supplying the ImageWriter emulator.

For a IIc though, you're sweet out of luck.

Matt

[Ryan]

On Oct 1, 3:26 am, johnd <panpanpan...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Looking for a laser printer to work with a Apple IIc, would a Personal
> Laserwriter 300 or a 320 be possible?

I have successfully used a Brother HL-5250DN laser printer with my
Apple IIe by connecting to its parallel port and using its Epson FX
compatibility mode. Had to kind of play with the margins to get it
right but it works well with both AppleWorks and Print Shop.

For the IIc you'd need a serial-to-parallel converter. Not sure if
that would work but you could try...

-Ryan

[Hugh Hood]

in article
9f56e2e6-4431-4a57...@gd10g2000vbb.googlegroups.com, johnd at
panpan...@gmail.com wrote on 10/1/11 4:26 AM:

> Looking for a laser printer to work with a Apple IIc, would a Personal
> Laserwriter 300 or a 320 be possible?

The info in this thread from 2009 is still valid:


<http://groups.google.com/group/comp.sys.apple2/browse_thread/thread/bb884cd
6cb88f943>


You'd need to make (or purchase) the correct serial cable for your IIc, but
otherwise, you'd be set to use your laser with AppleWorks and other 'text'
programs (primarily PCL mode) and PublishIt!4 (PostScript mode).




Hugh Hood

[Alex Freed]

>
> And before I shoot my own foot off... I just read up that the Personal
> 300/LS, Select 300|310|360, Pro 600|630|640|810 and Color LaserWriter
> all supported serial ports...

I guess I can be considered a resident expert as I used to work for
Adobe Systems - a company that actually designed all the PostScript
printers of the era.

They all had a serial port. LocalTalk was based on a Zilog "SCC" chip
that is a dual USART. One channel was plain old serial.

Software is a different matter. Either you write some Apple 2 code to
spit out PostScript of write some interpreter in PostScript on the
printer itself, crazy as it sounds. Yes, PostScript is a full blown
programming language :)

So the short answer is it can be done but not without writing code.

-Alex.

[sarkeizen]

One option would be to use PublishIt. IIRC it supported Postscript
output.

[Michael Black]

On Tue, 4 Oct 2011, Alex Freed wrote:

>
>>
>> And before I shoot my own foot off... I just read up that the Personal
>> 300/LS, Select 300|310|360, Pro 600|630|640|810 and Color LaserWriter
>> all supported serial ports...
>
> I guess I can be considered a resident expert as I used to work for Adobe
> Systems - a company that actually designed all the PostScript printers of the
> era.
>
> They all had a serial port. LocalTalk was based on a Zilog "SCC" chip that is
> a dual USART. One channel was plain old serial.
>
> Software is a different matter. Either you write some Apple 2 code to spit
> out PostScript of write some interpreter in PostScript on the printer itself,
> crazy as it sounds. Yes, PostScript is a full blown programming language :)
>

That's at least some of what Don Lancaster was doing with the Apple II and
laser printer. I can't remember to what extent he was actually using it
for printing, but he was showing off Postscript as a programming language.
So for example, he wasn't making patterns and then printing them, he was
showing off how to make the patterns on the printer, hand coding on the
Apple II.

Of course, at least at one point, he had one of those laser printers with
the hard drive attached, so the laser printer was like a full blown
computer.

Michael