[Canon CX printer] > > But, I didn't know that there was a popular Perq interface.
It's hardly 'popular' (or common). Any PERQ OIO card is rare. It's just that the most common one (in fact AFAIK the only one from 3 Rivers) has the option of the Canon CX printer interface. Note that if you find a 3 Rivers OIO board with just the ethernet interface then it's possible to add the Canon printer interface although some of the ICs were hard to find 20 years ago and are presumably even harder to find now. The other OIO boards that I have seen are a bare wire-wrap one which was often used to make the QIC-02 tape interface (I think Bob had that), although as I mentioned there's enough space on the Ethernet/Canon board to add this logic and wire-wrap it together. And an interface for a Datacopy digital camera, which I am pretty sure Bob didn't have > THAT makes it much more worthwhile! > > > IIRC, at one time TallTree (JLaser) sold a cheap reverisble modification > for using LaserJet as a CX-VDO, and a similar interface for SX. There was an official (Canon) SX-VDO printer (I am not sure if that's the right name but you know what I mean) which had a simple buffer board in place of the formatter And there was also a 3rd party board that went in the option connector of the Laserjet 2 formatter and which added a CX-VDO interface. I don't know if either works with the PERQ, but I suspect they both do. In the case of the CX engine printers, there's a 34 pin cable that links the formatter board (in the top lid) to the 'DC controller board' -- the board with a microcontroller on it that controls the printer motors, laser, etc. The CX-VDO interface is just a straight through cable conected to that connector on the DC controller board and a DC37 socket on the other end. There's a 6 pin connector on the DC controller board that connects to the 5 status LEDs (and a common +5V line) on the CX-VDO panel. Of course toner cartridges for these printers are getting almost impossible to find now. And I don't think any later Laserjets had a 'VDO' interface option. > > Printer-Works used to provide a lot of information about them. Yes. Bob sent me the PrinterWorks CX parts catalogue _after_ I'd rebuilt my Canon LBP8A1 (with a dead formatter board) as a CX-VDO... -tony