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Saxonia Issue 01 Part 014
Amiga and printers
By Rumrunner/VOID
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There were never any real problem connecting whatever printer to our
Amigas earlier. All printer had their own character set (often several
sets) built in, and so, the computer only needed to send the character
values to the printer, and some control sequences if you wanted to change
font, or underline, put the characters in cursiv, and so on.
Printing graphics also used to work fine, as soon as you got the brightness
set correctly. Even if you hadn't got a dedicated driver for you printer,
generic or Epson drivers used to work on most printers.
But things isn't this easy anymore. I think this started with WinBlows
becoming more and more used on the pc. Windoze prints both graphics and
text as a picture, and so, there was no need to keep a character set in
the printer ROMs anymore. Many printers still have a character set, and
these usually works on the Amiga, but those without are not easy using
on Amiga, or from DOS on pc. So, doing a copy filename prt: (or copy
filename prn on pc) to print out a text you are only going to read once
will not work. And everyone knows that printing an image takes longer time
and uses more ink than just printing pure text, even if you use draft mode.
I have a Lexmark Z22 printer which prints really magnificent pictures,
but sadly, I have never gotten it to work on Amiga, or from DOS on pc
(yes, if you didn't know, I have a 486/66 which I bought in 1994, when all
my contacts had moved to pc and I didn't get anything new for my Amiga 500
and didn't get the chance to buy an Amiga 1200 because all local computer
shops had quit dealing with Amiga).
I have found some (expensive) programs for using several kinds of printers
on Amiga, but none of the listings displayed my printer.
I even sent mail to the companies making these programs, but I never got
an answer. And the people behind the product even had the nerve to keep
my mail adress and send me junkmail about some other products they released
way later on.
So, here's the challenge to all coders who are more experienced than me.
If you can make a program making it possible to use Lexmark printers
on Amiga, you will get hall of fame status here in Saxonia. Anyone
interested?