Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!clyde.concordia.ca!nstn.ns.ca!news.cs.indiana.edu!samsung!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!ubc-cs!alberta!alberta!cpsc.ucalgary.ca!ajfcal!blender!herb From: herb@blender.uucp (Herb Peyerl) Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript Subject: Re: problems with talaris laser printer? Message-ID: <1991Jan29.234500.i> Date: 29 Jan 91 23:45:00 GMT References: <11287@uhccux.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu> Distribution: comp Organization: Home for the Bewildered Lines: 33 We tried out a Talaris XT2492 for about a month.. The Xerox people were particularly annoying but we ended up having to get the source for the Talaris ethernet driver from Talaris and porting the thing to the Apollo. The port was fairly easy and it only took a few days to get the thing working. However, as others have mentioned, TeX output was incredibly slow and once it did produce output it wasn't consistent with our QMS 810+ (ie: Font substitutions). I spoke with the people at Talaris about the speed of the XT2492 and TeX output to which they mentioned that they've written a dvi2excl driver which speeds it up incredibly. I never bothered trying it out since it seemed sort of stupid to me to have to run an EXCL driver to bypass the postscript for one application. Other applications we've tried are PCB Layouts... One of them was a 5.6MB postscript file which the printer refused to print. Our QMS810+ didn't have too much of a problem with it... In terms of speed, we thought the Talaris fell into the "Ridiculously slow" category... We ended up returning the Talaris and investing in a DEC PS20 which presently boots off our Vax and gets stuff from it via Decnet. Then we have a DecStation 3100 that acts as an lpd gateway to it as well so we can print to it from our TCP/IP hosts. In the meantime, I've written a prf->lpd driver for the Apollo so the whole thing looks transparent. The same 5.6MB file that wouldn't print on the Talaris prints on the PS20 in about 45 minutes which is about as long as it takes for our QMS 810+... We had a slight problem with TeX in that dvi2ps puts "Palatino" fonts in the header which the PS20 doesn't like... We've changed those to "Times" and it's fine... -- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- UUCP: herb@blender.UUCP || #define Janitor Administrator ICBM: 51 03 N / 114 03 W || Apollo System_Janitor, Novatel Communications "I spilled spot remover on my dog and now he's gone..."