Re: Most modern color printer for IIGS?

[salfter@salfter.dyndns.org (Scott Alfter)]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

In article <Slick-1401021834050001@12-248-65-251.client.attbi.com>,
Slick <Slick@noSPAMplease.net> wrote:
>Just went to buy a new color ribbon for my old ImageWriter II, and it
>seems that the last known store in my area to cary them has dropped them.
>I think it's about time to retire my IW2, but what's the most modern color
>printer I can get that work with AppleWorks 3.0, a copy of The Print Shop
>IIGS that I've had since December '88, AppleWorks GS, and ShadowWrite?

I haven't actually tried hooking it up yet (because it's parallel-only), but
I'm guessing that the Lexmark Optra Color 40 I bought a while back ought to
work.  It's a color inkjet printer with both PCL and PostScript support. 
The LaserWriter driver ought to work for at least B&W printing from 16-bit
apps.  Third-party drivers for HP DeskJets also ought to work if you want it
to do color.  Printing from 8-bit apps will most likely use the LW driver's
Imagewriter emulator, which wouldn't do color (maybe color support could be
hacked into it...you'd need fairly decent knowledge of PostScript to do
that).  A few 8-bit apps generate PostScript by themselves...the only one
that comes to mind is Publish-It! (which I used quite a bit back the
day...uploaded a PostScript file to the machines in the computer lab and
used their printer).

This model has been discontinued for some time, but I think the Optra Color
45 is still current (and handles up to 11x17, too).  Alternatively, you
could snag this one that's up on eBay (supposed to be NIB):

http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1322253694

That one's currently at $10.  I bought mine for $100 when buy.com was
clearing them out a while back, so you probably don't want to go much beyond
that.  With a serial-to-parallel converter (or maybe a parallel card...don't
have much experience with these on Apple IIs), it ought to work fairly well.

I suppose any of the HPs that still support PCL would work.  They won't grok
PostScript, though.  Avoid PPA models (DeskJet 7xxC, etc.).  Canon inkjets
used to be Epson-compatible, but I don't think that holds for current
models.  Speaking of Epson, while their inkjets might stand the best chance
of working with 8-bit apps (assuming that they've kept compatibility with
their older models), you couldn't pay me to take one...in my experience,
they've been extremely unreliable.  (They like to clog up, and due to the
design of the printer, the clog usually requires a service call to fix.)

  _/_
 / v \  Scott Alfter (salfter@salfter.dyndns.org)
(IIGS(  http://salfter.dyndns.org
 \_^_/  rm -rf /bin/laden
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org

iD8DBQE8RLzkVgTKos01OwkRAj2pAJ40So+LqDqE1/Kjk7+zP6cgHjXwFwCgl8HN
3Re2dAJce9zaUPqO0ynYK1o=
=KOtn
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----