screen dumps from a UNIXPC to HP Laserjet

[Thad P Floryan]

Jeff Small writes asking for assistance with UNIXPC screen dumps to produce
documentation on an HP laserjetII printer, and wonders how the original UNIXPC
manuals' screen dumps were produced.  Well, hold onto your hats ....

I've been using a 10-year-old C.Itoh 8510 ProWriter 8-pin dot-matrix printer
(which is 100% supported by the UNIXPC's standard software (I wonder why? :-))
and the output ON THE UNIXPC is about as close to laser-quality as any printer
I've seen (including 24-pin "state of the art" printers).

A screen dump of the Mahjongg game screen, tiles 'n all, looks simply
incredible.

TeX printing (using the dvicit (TeX "dvi" to C.Itoh) driver) is camera-ready.
Even more so when you do a 50% reduction to the paper size used for the UNIXPC
manuals (which is exactly half a standard 8-1/2" x 11" ``A'' paper size).

I showed some samples to people at the office, and the people there mused
"Why do why need expensive PostScript (tm) printers when the eleventy-seven
thousand C.Itoh printers we have here are capable of output THIS good?"

Even my jaw dropped to the floor when I saw how GOOD the output of the C.Itoh
was on the UNIXPC.  The UNIXPC has breathed new life into these aging printers.

So, it's my { SPECULATION | CONJECTURE } that since the print quality is SO
good on the C.Itoh as driven by the UNIXPC *and* that since the C.Itoh is
(suspiciously) the only non-AT&T printer appearing in the list of printers on
my system, that the UNIXPC manuals' screen dumps must have been produced on
a C.Itoh (or something VERY similar).

Glancing at the old docs for the C.Itoh, it seems it's capable of 160DPI
printing in its binary image mode, and it provides variable vertical spacing.

I've seen these printers (RS-232 serial interface) for $25 on the used market.
They're also available with a Centronics parallel interface which is what I've
been looking for since I have a dearth of RS-232 ports.

As an aside, the printing mechanism of the C.Itoh 8510 is EXACTLY the same as
the Apple ImageWriter and uses the same ribbons.  If you've seen the hardcopy
from a Mac, then you'll know what I mean about the quality of the 8510.  DEC
also OEM'd the C.Itoh mechanism for their LP-50 (or some similarly numbered)
printer.

And these babies are RUGGED.  Mine hit the floor (falling from my desk) during
last month's earthquake, and suffered NO damage whatsover.

Thad Floryan [ thad at cup.portal.com (OR) ..!sun!portal!cup.portal.com!thad ]