Re: FS: A StyleWriter for your Apple

[supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer)]

CUTblakeney@home.com (Jeff Blakeney) wrote:

>supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer) wrote:
>
>>Are you sure?  I remember reading IIGS users successfully
>>used Epson LQ driver in Harmonie to print to Epson Stylus
>>400 color printer.  I think ESC/P and ESC/P2 refer to the
>>text based subset of ESP commands and ESC/Raster
>>refers to the graphics subset.  Harmonie, of course, uses
>>the graphics subset and so does PrintShop GS.
>
>I'm almost positive.  The specs for the printer says that it uses
>ESC/Raster as the printer language and when I contacted Epson they
>told me that the printer only worked with Windows.

That could be because they think you are asking them
about DOS programs which, like ProDOS 8 programs,
normally print ASCII text.  The key to seeing if a particular
Epson printer works with Harmonie on the IIGS is to see
if it has a Macintosh style serial port.  If it does, then it'll
work with the IIGS too most likely.  Note: such Mac
serial ports will normally only work at 57.6k.  Harmonie
provides the high speed serial port driver needed to talk
to these Mac ports.  You can also find freely available
high speed port drivers from elsewhere.  Sequential, for
example, distributed one freely for their serial printer
sharing devices and for their MegaBuff ImageWriter II
buffer.

>I had hooked the printer up to my IIgs via a Grappler+ parallel card
>and tried printing from GS/OS using the Epson driver with System 6.0.1
>and an EpsonLQ driver that I found somewhere on the net and got
>garbage.  I think I even tried printing text from Applesoft and got
>garbage but I can't remember for sure now.

That's exactly what happened to me with my Canon BJ.
My Grappler+ card did not work with the freeware
Epson LQ driver.  I've also been informed that the free
Epson LQ driver produces low resolution output which
is not at all nice.  That's when I got Harmonie and used
the Epson LQ driver from there.  The Harmonie Epson LQ
driver generates smooth dark text.  Looks great!
(Incidentally, for some reason my Grappler+ card did
not work with Harmonie either.  I don't know why.  It
could be that some Grappler+ cards have problems
printing in graphics mode.  My Grappler+ card would
randomly generate garbage from Publish It! too when
I used that program on the IIe.)

Now as previously mentioned, the Harmonie Epson LQ
drivers don't support color printing from Epson or Canon
printers.  But if your objective is text, I can say from
seeing the print from both DeskJets and Canon units
that the BubbleJet text is sharper due to the BubbleJet
technology.

Of course like Joe said, only the DeskJet drivers have
full capability.  Namely, they support color printing and
compression.  The compression part helps in print
speed.  But that still doesn't make DeskJets the
sharpest printers.  Apple and Canon ones win that
prize because they use BubbleJet print heads.  (And
for color print from an PC or Mac, the photo quality
of an Epson Stylus beats DeskJets too.)  DeskJets
and DeskWriters are the most popular and compatible,
but they are not the best printers.

>If I ever get the nozzles cleaned and get the printer to give me nice,
>clean output from my Pentium II, I'll try it again on my IIgs but I
>still want a Canon printer regardless of whether it works or not.  The
>only reason I even have this Epson is because it was given to me for
>free.  :-)

Good luck!