If I understand it correctly, only very old legacy printers have the Postscript "engine" in the printer itself. Modern Postscript printers do the Postscript interpretation (rasterization) using a driver in the OS of the motherboard, and send only the raster to the printer. (All modern printers are just raster printers.) Hence the fact that Postscript is standard doesn't help. If the Postscript interpreter / rasterizer for the modern printer hasn't been written for OS9, you are out of luck. Only if the raster code for the modern printer is the same as the [or some] legacy printer (and the legacy printer driver would then work) are you in luck. And even then, if the [legacy] driver checks for the hardware signature of the printer and finds something it does not understand, it likely won't process the print job anyway, even if it would work.
HP PCL is pretty much standard (at several levels), just as Postscript is (at several levels) and you might get something to work with HP PCL (Hewlett Packard's Page Control Language, o/a) also. In either case (Postscript or HP PCL), if I understand it correctly, with all modern printers, the rasterization of the page is now done by the main cpu using an OS driver, with only raster code being sent to the printer (over the printer data cable or over the network via Ethernet). An outfit call Printerworks (http://www.printerworks.com/) supports HP printers and often has re-built legacy printers available. Fred Holmes At 06:49 PM 1/22/2008, Tom Piwowar wrote: >Another thing to do is to make sure the printer supports Ethernet and >PostScript. These are both long established standards. A new printer that >supports them both will work with a standard OS 9 printer configuration. >The only problem you are likely to encounter is changes in the format of >PPD files. Some of these may not work in OS 9, but if that is the case >you can probably just use an earlier version of the PPD from a earlier >model of that printer. ************************************************************************ * ==> QUICK LIST-COMMAND REFERENCE - Put the following commands in <== * ==> the body of an email & send 'em to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <== * Join the list: SUBSCRIBE COMPUTERGUYS-L Your Name * Too much mail? Try Daily Digests command: SET COMPUTERGUYS-L DIGEST * Tired of the List? Unsubscribe command: SIGNOFF COMPUTERGUYS-L * New address? From OLD address send: CHANGE COMPUTERGUYS-L YourNewAddress * Need more help? Send mail to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ************************************************************************ * List archive from 1/1/2000 is on the MARC http://marc.info/?l=computerguys-l * List archive at www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ * RSS at www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.xml * Messages bearing the header "X-No-Archive: yes" will not be archived ************************************************************************
