Re: Laser printer to use with a Apple IIc

[Tony Kavadias <tonzaggl@gmail.com>]

On Oct 2, 2:02 am, Jerry <awande...@yahoo.ca> wrote:
> Kevin Dady <ke...@hackaday.com> writes:
> > 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
>
> 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

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