Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!newstop!texsun!texbell!uudell!natinst!rpp386!woody
From: woody@rpp386.cactus.org (Woodrow Baker)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript
Subject: Re: Do I need memory upgrade?
Summary: try a higher baudrate
Message-ID: <17596@rpp386.cactus.org>
Date: 8 Jan 90 13:03:05 GMT
References: <9509@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu>
Distribution: na
Organization: River Parishes Programming, Plano, TX
Lines: 30

> I have PS programs that are 13 MB in size.  They have no bitmaps, just 
> 180,000 gray-filled triangles.  Takes about 4-5 hours to print on a LaserWriter
> Plus (mostly due to the 9600 baud serial line).  I assume that adding memory
> would not make a difference in my case.  If I had a way to render the PostScript
> into a bitmap and send that I would do it, since my calculations show a bitmap
> for the whole page would be only about 1 MB, about 1/10 the size.

The laserwriter+ was not a fast machine.  font chaching is not going to help
you any here, and no memory upgrade will help you.  As a matter of fact, that
particular printer is not expandable.  I would suggest, since you have no
centronics interface, that you try a higher baudrate.  Don lancaster runs one
at 57Kbaud, but it only works unidirectionaly, reliably.  However, 19,200 and
38.4Kb should be achievable.  You can set the serial port up for those 
baudrates, and it should make a GREAT deal of diffrence.  looks like the 13 mb
file would take 3.7 hours tranmission time at 9600 buad, approx.  at
19,200 it should take about 1.8, and at 38.4 it should take about .9.  These
are extremely rough estimates, but if you have any significant amount of
data to do, it would pay you to go to a higher baudrate. Your machine
should be able to handle it.  Alternatly, perhaps you could re-arrange the
data to compress it a bit.  If you had a transparent i/o channel so you could
get all 8 bits through, there are several compression techniques that you could
use to squeeze the file down in size.  The printer can unpack the data.  Perhaps
there is one that would work in 7 bits, but how to handle the special control
characters is the real problem.  Good luck......

Cheers...
Woody
 
> 
> 				++Eric Fielding