From: utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!info-vax
Newsgroups: fa.info-vax
Title: Laser printers
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.218
Posted: Sat Dec  4 16:45:46 1982
Received: Sun Dec  5 09:14:15 1982

>From Odonnell@YALE  Sat Dec  4 16:25:59 1982
Mail-From: ARPANET host SANDIA rcvd at 29-Nov-82 1048-PST
Mail-From: ARPANET site YALE rcvd at 29-Nov-82 1145-MST
To: info-vax@SANDIA
Remailed-Date:  4 Dec 1982 1047-PST
Remailed-From: the tty of Geoffrey S. Goodfellow  <Geoff5 at SRI-CSL>
Remailed-To: Info-VAX@SRI-CSL: ;

I feel obliged to respond to Brian Reid's excellent, informative article on
laser printers.

We have had an Imagen Imprint-10 in service at Yale since early January.
To date it has printed over 150,000 pages with no problems.  We produce
output using Scribe, troff, and TEX.  The printer is interfaced to a VAX
over a 9600 baud line at present; the VAX acts as a server to the rest
of our Ethernet.  We expect to switch to direct Ethernet communication
when that becomes available.  Their Centronics interface is available
now.  The release of general-purpose graphics (vectors, textures, and
screen dumps) is imminent, we are told.

The reports of prolonged problems are hard to understand.  While we've
done a lot of work on the host side (page reversal, font downloading
optimization), we're still running the controller firmware delivered in
January with no significant troubles; our only complaint is the limited
(metafont) font library.

The Canon is a reasonable marking engine; for those who care about large
formats, it will handle larger sheets than the Xerox unit.  It has never
failed, and the initial image adjustment procedure has never required
repetition; image quality stays consistently high.  240 dpi is a limitation,
all will agree; but our output looks better than a lot of higher-resolution
output from poorly adjusted printers.

We plan to buy two more units shortly, and Imagen leads our list of
suppliers at present.  QMS has yet to send us literature after repeated
requests; does anyone have their printer?  I'd like to hear from those
who have comparable experience with the Symbolics printer.

To sum up:  Our experience with Imagen has been good, and they seem to be
continuing to produce good stuff (a complete rewrite of their controller
firmware is being completed now; they say it will be the base for lots of
extended functionality).
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