From: utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!ARPAVAX:C70:info-cpm Newsgroups: fa.info-cpm Title: printer query results Article-I.D.: ucb.1917 Posted: Mon Sep 6 14:12:52 1982 Received: Fri Sep 17 06:37:54 1982 >From Jeffrey@Office-2 Mon Sep 6 14:12:33 1982 I received the following messages in response to my "letter quality printer" query. My conclusions are: - the Diablo 630 is very popular; this is probably a combination of reasonable price, good functionality, and high reliability; - the Fancy Font software package from Pacific Software is very interesting. I have some brochures and print samples about this product and I'm impressed. Apparently, Fancy Font and an Epson printer with Graptrax can together print a number of fonts in a number of sizes with several variations in facing (e.g. regular, bold, italic, etc.). The "News Release" from Pacific software sort of implies that all samples were printed unreduced (i.e. the samples were copies of pages which came "straight from the presses"). During a phone conversation with Mr. Overman of Pacific Software, I believe he said that the "News Release" itself had been reduced. Well, that's probably just a nit. The package can certainly produce beautiful pages using multiple fonts. Don't expect to produce voluminous documents in breathtakingly exciting olde english font however. Print speed is advertised as about 6 lines per minute. Thanks to all who responded to the query. Jeffrey Stone Menlo Park, CA p.s. My hytype I daisywheeler is back from the shop and I'm $129.55 lighter. But -- its worth it. The old clunker once again makes neat, clean marks on paper. Maybe I'll stick with it for another year. In any case, I'll certainly order Graftrax ROMs for my Epson and will either purchase Fancy Font or roll my own. the responses to the printer query follow --> --------------------------------------------- Date: 31 August 1982 17:54-EDT From: Robert Elton Maas Subject: correspondence printer query --> correspondence service bureau To: Jeffrey at OFFICE-2 I wish somebody with a printer would open a private business which accepts electronic mail and prints it on paper and stuffs it in an envelop (or has it printed inside a sealed envelop the way bank deposit slips and paychecks are done) and puts postage on it (or meters it) and posts it, so I can send mail to non-compute people without having to write or print longhand or make a trip to campus to pick up my listing and mail it myself. This would be sort of like ECOM except it'd be for small customers, or like what NIC used to do about 10 years ago for free until they ran out of funds. Date: 31 Aug 1982 1627-PDT Sender: SCHNUR at USC-ISI Subject: Re: letter quality printer query From: SCHNUR at USC-ISI To: Jeffrey at OFFICE-2 Message-ID: <[USC-ISI]31-Aug-82 16:27:06.SCHNUR> In-Reply-To: Your message of 30 Aug 1982 0739-PDT Jeffrey, My wife has used a nec 7700 printer for about 1 year now in our home translating business. She has typed well over a million words in that time frame. the printer has performed flawlessly. Since the thimbles can take 128 characters it is possible to get some fairly versatile print fonts. As of yet however Nec does not produce one that has both a Full roman set and enough Greek and scientific characters to be perfect for use in all occasions. At Nrl we also have the two headed Qume top of the line printer. This printer breaks down every month or two and its proportional print is poor. The nec can produce excellent copy with a good text writer,e.g. Vectors memorite III, Micropro's wordstar. So I would go for the NEC over the Qume. I do not know much about the new Diablo. Joel (NRL 6510) Date: 31 August 1982 05:11-EDT From: Keith Petersen Subject: letter quality printer query To: Jeffrey at OFFICE-2 Hi, Jeffrey, welcome back to the net. You might try sending your inquiry to INFO-PRINTERS@MC - you're more likely to get a reply there, I think. I would enjoy seeing what you get back from this query. Thanks. --Keith Date: 31 August 1982 21:07-EDT From: Leor Zolman Subject: printers To: jeffrey at OFFICE-2 I just bought a Diablo 630, and love it! Especially when combined with Mark of the Unicorn's "final Word", which knows all about what the Diablo can do. I'm doing all my C docs on it. A BIG win. -leor Date: 31 August 1982 21:17-EDT From: Charlie Strom Subject: correspondence printer query To: Jeffrey at OFFICE-2 cc: INFO-PRINTERS at MIT-MC Jeffrey, I noticed you have an Epson printer. That reminded me that there is a most interesting new software package that has just been introduced called Fancy Font. This set of programs takes advantage of the Epson graftrax rom resolution (apparently higher than most if not all other printers in its price class) to print a variety of typfaces. The author has included a selection of several styles of type in each of several sizes (I have a preliminary version, so this may differ slightly from what is now being offered), a text formatter which handles the dozen or so fonts, the Epson standard character sets, justification, margins, headers, etc. with both command line options and imbedded controls, as well as a program to edit the supplied fonts and one to create those of your own. The latter looks like a real big job to me, so I think I'll pass on it! Anyway, the point of all this is that the print quality is fantastic. I can't wait for the reaction when I send my next memorandum in old English! The price of Fancy Font is I believe around $180, and in my opinion it is well worth it. Source is: Softcraft 8726 S. Sepulveda Blvd., Suite 1641 Los Angeles, Ca. 90045 213-641-3822 Date: 5 September 1982 20:05-EDT From: Charlie Strom Subject: correspondence printer query To: Jeffrey at OFFICE-2 cc: CSTROM at MIT-MC Sounds like you are as impressed as I was [editor's note: Charlie is referring to Fancy Font]. I do not think you will be disappointed with the formatter. It allows justification, centering, variable margin size, headers, footers, etc., and up to ten fonts/document. I am currently playing around with the definition of fonts of my own using the Hershey Character set as a basis. This looks like a most simple proposition. Regards, Charlie Strom Date: 31 August 1982 21:48-EDT From: Dan Blumenfeld Subject: High Quality Printers To: Jeffrey at OFFICE-2 Jeffrey, If you're currently looking at diablo-type printers (and you're willing to pay $3-4K), I suggest that you give SanTek (formerly Sanders Technology) a call. They manufacture a "high-density" dot-matrix printer which uses a multi-pass technique to produce high quality output. I've been using one recently, and it's really a nice unit. The printer has many features worth mentioning. First of all, the key to the flexibility of the printer is that it accepts up to six ROM cartridges (similar to the Atari Game Cartridges), each one containing either one or two fonts. By sending the printer commands (it has lots of them), you can switch between fonts, etc. It sure beats changing Daisywheels. Another very useful feature of the printer is that it has different print qualities (which is does by changing the number of passes per line). When preparing drafts, you can use the draft ("Epson") quality which in itself looks pretty good. The nice thing about this is that the printer zips along at over 300 cps bidirectional. The highest quality output is printed at about 75 cps or so, which blows away Diablos. There are also intermediate quality settings which require less time to print. All of this is also under software control. As far as fonts go, SanTek has a catalog which has everything from Helvetica to Cyrillic to Hebrew, as well as Presentation Fonts, Greek/Math Fonts, etc. They also have a dot-plot ROM to so that one can turn out graphs and charts. The printer lists for about $4K which is much more cost effective than the double daisywheel diablo. The only drawback of the printer is that it is not the most quiet printer I've seen. Then again, for 300+ cps, I can tolerate a bit of noise. Hope this helps out... Dan Date: 1 Sep 1982 (Wednesday) 0827-EDT From: ATHEY at LLL-MFE Subject: printers To: jeffrey at OFFICE-2 Well - there are lots of printers available. Since you already have an EPSON that tells me that you don't want something really expense like a Sanders or Malibu - and that you don't need a dual mode printer. Diablo and QUME are probably the most popular with the Diablo being my preference BUT there is another one on the market which lists for half the price of the Diablo - it is the Daisywritter. This nice machine sells for $1495.00 with a 48K buffer and $1095 with a 16K buffer(I think). The actual print speed is 30 cps BUT it has a fast slew rate of 200 cps, which is used for 1 to n spaces...effectively giving it a throughput of 50 - 90 cps for average letters..the Diablo 16xx print at 55 cps max. Better yet with the 48K buffer which can be downloaded in approx. 30 secs. the printer will continue to print for about 30 min....leaving your machine free to do what it will. If this isn't enough there is one more capability...it handles all of the Diablo/Qume/Centronics data protocols as well as having 4(not 1) interfaces: IEE 488, Serial, Centronics Parallel, and I forgot what the fourth one is. You don't pay extra for these --- it comes with all 4. Sounds like this would get you the most for your money as well as doing the job you need to get done. If your requirements are not what I assumed let me know and I'll see if there isn't something around to fill them. Chuck Athey - ATHEY@LLL-MFE Date: 1 Sep 1982 1023-PDT From: Jim Moore Subject: Re: letter quality printer query To: Jeffrey at OFFICE-2, info-cpm at BRL In-Reply-To: Your message of 30 Aug 1982 0739-PDT Jeffrey, We have been using a Diably o 630 (ksr), and are completely satisfied with it. Excellent quality printing & reliability. Only problem (minor) is that to use it w/ Wordstar, two of the "smart" chips have to be pulled. Seems that too much intelligence is not a good thing. I would be interested in your replies. Good luck, Jim Date: 2 Sep 1982 1406-PDT From: Jim Moore Subject: Re: letter quality printer query To: Jeffrey at OFFICE-2 In-Reply-To: Your message of 1 Sep 1982 1806-PDT Jeffrey, I got mine (2) [editor's note, Jim is referring to a Diablo 630] for about $2500, w/ a hefty which included a hefty discount. If you use wordstar, you will want to pull out the chips in sockets F23 and F32. You might be able to save $$s by buying a 630 w/o these chips initially. They make the 630 "too smart" for WS to deal with. I got a b-i-dir. tract. feed and a cut-sheet feeder (from someone else). I am very pleased w/ both. The feeder is expensive, so unless you plan to do A LOT of typing on cut sheets and envelopes, I reccomment that you pass on this one. Good luck. Jim Moore Date: 3 Sep 1982 (Friday) 2001-EDT From: HUNEYCUTT at WPAFB-AFWAL Subject: Quality printer.. To: Jeffrey at OFFICE-2 Hi, If you're not worried about speed and want to go the 12-1500 $ range now available, the F10 (C.Itoh) can't be beat. 40 CPS and all the bells and whistles you could want with fully-formed characters. In fact, this moose has features that none of the word processing packages can currently take advantage of, like down-loading printwheel specs, etc... Doug Date: Saturday, 4 September 1982 23:59-EDT Sender: ZVONA.GYRO at MIT-OZ From: ZVONA.GYRO at MIT-MC To: Jeffrey at Office-2 Subject: letter quality printer query We use a Diablo 630 with excellent results. These are not as reliable as the older Diablos (e.g. 1650) but are much less expensive. If you get a non-630 Diablo, just be sure it uses metal printwheels -- the plastic ones wear out too fast. If you really feel extravagant you can buy a Wang/Diablo on the surplus market (I can get you one for $2800 but you probably want to buy it out in CA) and a Morrow Mult I/O (by far the best S-100 card for controlling one of these). A friend of mine has had one of these for three years, and except for when he plugged the interface in backwards, @i has ever gone wrong with it -- these babies are @i. -- Scott ------- -------