From: utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!info-vax Newsgroups: fa.info-vax Title: Re: inexpensive laser printers Article-I.D.: ucbvax.221 Posted: Sat Dec 4 17:15:22 1982 Received: Sun Dec 5 09:52:05 1982 >From reid%Shasta@SU-Score Sat Dec 4 16:55:28 1982 Mail-From: ARPANET host SANDIA rcvd at 1-Dec-82 0026-PST Mail-From: ARPANET site SU-SCORE rcvd at 1-Dec-82 0126-MST Mail-From: SU-NET host Shasta rcvd at 1-Dec-82 0026-PST To: Randy Frank Cc: mark.umcp-cs@UDEL-RELAY, info-vax@SANDIA In-Reply-To: Your message of 1 Dec 1982 0040-MST. Remailed-Date: 4 Dec 1982 1047-PST Remailed-From: the tty of Geoffrey S. Goodfellow Remailed-To: Info-VAX@SRI-CSL: ; The last I heard from DEC engineering, through my contacts out here at the DEC Western Research Lab in Palo Alto, the LN01 as delivered will not be able to print bitmaps. It's basically not possible to print full-page bitmaps over a Unibus given their speed and addressing capability; you must have some kind of a controller between the computer and the printer. Whether that controller is a full-page frame buffer (12 megabits for the LN01) or a clever synthesis interface like the Imagen printer uses, you can't send that kind of traffic over a Unibus. So if they are getting it to work at all with bitmaps, they are either building a much fancier controller, building an SBI interface or a Massbus interface (both expensive), or pulling some trick that I can't even imagine. I'll believe a 2700 printing Interpress (or any other Scribe-generatable format) when I see it. I'm not holding my breath. If those guys really wanted to make printers and not glorified typewriters, they could have done so a long time ago.