🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <9103132036.AA25566@crayola.cs.UMD.EDU> 3IU4TOB@CMUVM.BITNET writes:
>I am interested in hearing about anyone's experience with the QMS 410 printer,
>in particular in a mixed PC and Mac environment.
 
We have 4 of these things. All of them are on the appletalk network and are connected
to a terminal server via the serial port and one is also connected via the parallel
port to a PC. They are used regularly by VAX/VMS users, MS-DOS users via DECnet-DOS
and, of course, the Mac users.

Most of the time they work quite well but...

>From article <9103151458.AA04825@crayola.cs.UMD.EDU>, by van@group1.UUCP (Van Bagnol):
> We seem to have an intermittent problem, though: when printing one job in 
> PostScript on the heels of another job in HP emulation, the auto-sensing 
> software gets confused and still thinks it's in one emulation and we end 
> up with printouts of the PostScript source.
> 
> BTW, anyone else run into this problem?
> 

We have this problem too. If I setup a test case with a MAC and the VAX blasting
files to the printer (both PS and HP from the VAX side and PS from the MAC side)
while I'm standing there watching it, it'll work flawlessly. It will fail at
random times for unknown reasons and always requires its power to be cycled to
get its attention back. All 4 of them exhibit the problem. QMS has replaced the
printers with new ones, btw, but the problems persist. The other anomoly is that
it will, for no apparent reason, disappear from the appletalk network at random
times for random periods, usually coming back sooner or later. This causes no
undo grief for the Mac users especially if it does this in the middle of their
print job. I cannot determine what makes it do this.

Also the HP emulation is not complete. It won't do all the pitches and point sizes
that the HP protocol allows for even though it'll do them if given a PS command to
do so. Voluminous documentation (even a video tape) accompanies the printer, however,
the HP escape codes that it'll process are not included (so you need an HP manual to
find those) nor does it include a document that describes ALL the PS commands it'll
process (it describes only some of the PS commands).

It would be a great printer if it only worked.
-- 
Dave Shepperd.	    shepperd@dms.UUCP or motcsd!dms!shepperd
Atari Games Corporation, 675 Sycamore Drive, Milpitas CA 95035.
Nobody knows what I'm saying. I don't even know what I'm saying.