Re: more newbie IIgs Qs

[supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer)]

"John King" <joki@eskimo.com> wrote:

>- Does "anyone" use AW IIgs 1.1 (say over AW51)? Maybe it's a personal
>preference thing.

I use it all the time.  You need Pointless (a TrueType font
interpreter) and Harmonie (a set of printer drivers) to make
the most use of it.  With both, the IIGS output will be just
like the output from your Mac or PC.

Given that and the fact that my IIGS has 8MB of memory,
more than 1GB of hard drive storage, and a five times
faster than normal processor with L2 cache and it is no
surprise that I still find the unit useful for word processing
and page layout tasks and have it connected to the same
printer my PC is.

>As far as stability, is IIgs stable wrt crashing and data integrity? Same
>question for AW5, and AW5.1 ( I know AW5 was something most quickly patched
>to 5.1).

For AWGS 1.1, there are several issues.  First, make
sure not to preload modules.  There is a known bug in
this function that will crash your system.  With a hard
drive, preloading saves no time, so why do it?  Second,
AWGS 1.1 really needs 4MB or more of memory to be
stable especially if you try to print.  I tried using AWGS
on a 1MB ROM 3 initially.  It crashed all the time.  Then
I got 8MB and it almost never crashes on me now and
I've been using it like this for years.

>- Is it possible to connect a serial HP IIP w/ Postscript to IIgs and maybe
>fool it into printing Postscript?

Use Harmonie from Shareware Solutions II and you can
print to the HP easily using the PCL HP printer language.
You can also use Postscript through Apple's LaserWriter
driver (included in the System 6.0.1 package) but in my
opinion, especially if you are using TrueType fonts, the
Harmonie drivers generate better results.

>- Since the 5.25" drives look identical between those on a Plat // e and the
>IIgs, does that mean I can connect the 3.5" floppy to the Plat // e
>(probably not, eh?)

Not without the right card.  The 5.25" controller of the
IIe will not drive a IIGS 3.5 drive.