Re: LaserWriter Help!

[Randy Shackelford <shack@onyx.southwind.net>]

David Empson <dempson@actrix.gen.nz> wrote:

:> As a purely theoretical question, then, the fact that a printer is a
:> QuickDraw printer does not itself prevent a driver from being written for
:> it to work with the IIGS, right?

: In theory, it would be possible to support this printer.  Practical
: considerations:

: 1. Someone would have to write a Print Manager driver that would be
: specific to this printer.  Not likely, given the small market.

: 2. A Print Manager port driver would be needed.

: 3. The SCSI printer driver would need to be completed, assuming it isn't
: quite there.

: 4. Apple never released any documentation on the printer command set for
: the IISC.  Unless it emulates something else, it would be necessary to
: reverse engineer its command set by running one on a Mac.  Since the
: connection to the printer is a SCSI bus, this would be staggeringly
: difficult (unlike a serial connection, where you can at least hook in
: and monitor the data).

Another factor is cost effectiveness. Suppose someone wrote such a thing
to support what few IIsc printers there are. They undoubtedly will want
money for it. You can buy most older LW printers which already have PS
and networking hardware, e.g. PLW NT or NTR, LW IIf, IInt, IIntx, IIg,
very reasonably these days. Then there are the really old timers, LW and
LW Plus, which sometimes are given away. That's what started this thread.
It's far easier to get an already supported printer than sit around and
wonder how easy it would be to add support for something else, which is
typically not as good as what you can get that is supported. That is
definitely the case in the LW II line. The IIsc is the bottom of the line
and I'd expect that many if not most of them have been upgraded via logic
board swaps. But then that's a common problem with all this fanciful talk 
about making Apple IIs support all the stuff which they don't.
-- 
Offsite mail to this host gets nuked.