Re: Deskjet 550C to AppleIIgs

[brianh@foghorn.cc.utexas.edu (Brian Huddleston)]

Thanks to everyone who responded.  Turns out dear old Mom was pulling a
fast one on me.  The reason she was cross examining me about printers was
that she was in the process for buying me one for my graduation. She
got me a DeskJet 560C!!   :) :) :)
Anyway, being used to my Imagewriter II I'm having lots of fun.  But since
everyone was so helpful I thought I would update everyone.

First of all, *none* of the current HP's have a serial port.  This is part
of HP's grand design to make doggone sure that Mac people buy the Deskwriters,
and not the Deskjet's.  The new 500, 500C's, etc. don't have the serial port
anymore.

As you might imagine this came as quite a shock to me.  Incredible elation
gave way to crushing disappointment as I searched in vain for a serial port.
(I didn't find out the above information until later.)

So, I thought, fine...I'll get a serial to parallel converter and work from
there.  A piece of advice to those attempting this yourself:  Under no
circumstance tell the sales types what you are trying to do.  They will
flat out tell you its "impossible"  and refuse to talk to you after that.

After treking all over Ft. Worth and most of Arlington I finally found an
obscure hardware place in Bedford (a small mid-city) that told me they had
one in stock.  I went down there, argued with another sales-type, who claimed
no such thing existed until I showed him.

Well, anyway, it does work.  However, something is screwed up with the hand-
shaking.  When the buffer fills up it just loses characters.  This really
only shows up when you print really long files (I was printing my thesis
which was about 110k) and printing graphics (This is slow, but I don't know
if its a GS thing or a Deskjet thing).  There is a work around, of course.
By configuring, the serial to parallel converter to 2400 baud and setting
the printer port similarly I was able to make it work without any problems.
Its sort of a bummer though.  It was sorta nice to be able to dump my
thesis to my deskjets buffer and get my cursor back in about 2 seconds.
Does anyone have any idea what I might be able to do to fix the handshaking
problem?  The serial to parallel adaptor I've got is really configurable, so
I should be able to fix it.  I'm using a standard Centronix parallel cable
for the printer-to-converter connection and an epson-to-mac cable for the
computer-to-converter connection.  Anyone who might have a pinout of the
serial cable would be thanked profusely.  Anyone who has any idea how to
fix this would be worshiped as a god. (I can supply more information if you
need it.)

But, anyway, I think the DeskJet 560c is a good printer for the GS.  Even
with the port speed at 2400 baud it seems fast than my Imagewriter II, and
the output (600dpi) is much much nicer. :)  You should see the color, too.
I printed the fill-patter screen off of Platinum paint and it almost looked
better than the screen. :) (The only caveat is that you really need to
be at least semi familiar with serial communication terminology to be able to
configure a serial-to-parallel converter properly.)

But, again, thanks to everyone that sent me help, and thanks in advance to
anyone who thinks they know whats wrong.

Thanks.

Brian

brianh@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu

Proud Owner of a 560C.