Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!husc6!mit-eddie!ll-xn!ames!ucbcad!ucbvax!ATHENA.MIT.EDU!jtkohl
From: jtkohl@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (John T Kohl)
Newsgroups: comp.laser-printers
Subject: Re: DEC PrintServer-40
Message-ID: <8705132120.AA19766@brillig.umd.edu>
Date: Tue, 5-May-87 09:48:32 EDT
Article-I.D.: brillig.8705132120.AA19766
Posted: Tue May  5 09:48:32 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 16-May-87 06:45:28 EDT
References: <113@hrc63.co.uk>
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: jtkohl@athena.mit.edu (John T Kohl)
Distribution: world
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Lines: 62
Keywords: DEC, Digital, Postscript
Approved: laser-lovers@brillig.umd.edu
Summary: It's nice


I would have mailed this response, but
the Internet domain name servers have never heard of hrc63.co.uk, and
it might be of interest to more people anyway.  See a forthcoming
followup for even more details.

In article <113@hrc63.co.uk> Trevor Wright writes:
>
>I am interested in a 'site' laser printer such as the Printserver-40, can
>existing or other interested users put me straight on:


MIT Project Athena has been using an LPS-40 for about a month now.  It
took us a while to get it working under ULTRIX, but we finally kludged it.

>        - does the MicroVAX run VMS or Ultrix
neither.  It runs VAXELN, an operating system with low overhead
intended for diskless operations.
>        - can we get at it via TCP/IP and /or DECnet
Currently only via DECNET.
>        - does it have the same font collection as the LaserWriter at least
Yes, it has a few more.  It has the same font collection as the LN03R:

Courier (& bold, italic, bold italic)
Times (")
Helvetica
New Century Schoolbook
Souvenir
Avant Garde
Lubalin Graph
Symbol

>        - how do the economics compare with traditional lineprinters eg
>          DataProducts 2260-type
I don't really know, we got it with "phunny money" from a DEC grant.
>        - what reaction do you get from users used to fanfold music-paper
>          when you move to cut A4 or whatever
We have used cut-sheet printers since we came into existence.
>        - how does the advertised '40 pages/min' match up to reality
For straight text printing (such as Scribe generated files) it really
does run that fast.  More computationally intensive things take
longer, of course, but the PostScript interpreter uses the VAX
floating point, and consequently runs considerably faster than
68000-based interpreters (like the LW).
>        - what sort of additional load is placed on the Ethernet
Not noticeable (on an Ethernet with about 200 workstations and hosts)
>        - what host s/w is available or are you using successfully
We had to do major kludges obtained through internal DEC friends to
get it working under Ultrix.  I assume that VMS support is
straightforward to deal with.
>
>Thanks...TREVOR WRIGHT
>         GEC Research
>      yc23%uk.co.gec-mrc.a@ucl-cs

John Kohl
MIT/Project Athena


----
John Kohl
MIT/Project Athena