Saxonia Issue 01 Part 014

Published in

· 22 Aug 2019

  

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?