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In article <1992Aug17.060351.13234@cmutual.com.au>, icj@cmutual.com.au (Ian Johnston) writes:
> 
> 	2) What other solutions do people have to high volume printing?
>        What brands of printers are in use?  Are they connected to
>        hosts or ethernet?
> 
High-volume Xerox printers such as the 4090, can be interfaced to Unix systems
via a Xerox product called Soleil. This performs PostScript decomposition on a
SPARCstation2, which converts data to Interpress format. 

There is a good writeup on the methodology in the paper called: 
"You Really Can Get There From Here", which describes Simon Fraser University's
migration from MTS to a distributed Unix Environment (from sfu.ca).

- Erik.

icj@cmutual.com.au (Ian Johnston) writes:

>Hi,
>	We are currently moving our applications from a mainframe
>enviroment to a Pyramid UNIX system.  At the moment we do alot
>of high volume printing from the mainframe to a Xerox 9700 
>printer.  I do know alot about this printer but I believe it
>uses a IBM bus/tag protocol to talk to the host. 
>	What I would like to know is :

>	1) Has anyone connected a IBM bus/tag protocol printer (preferably
>       Xerox) to a UNIX host or TCP/IP terminal server?  If so please
>       send me details.

	Probably the cheapest option would be to buy a new interface for
	the printer.  The Pyramids have a "DataProducts" interface for 
	high speed printing, as well as using either direct RS232 type 
	connections (They can run to 38 k if you are lucky).  Also a centronics
	interface is avaliable for the xmi card.  If you still need to 
	get access to the printers from the SNA side, Pyramid have  
	32xx emulation cards/software avaliable.

>	2) What other solutions do people have to high volume printing?
>       What brands of printers are in use?  Are they connected to
>       hosts or ethernet?

	HP, Dataproducts, Xerox  etc.  They can be connected either direct 
	connect via the interfaces mentioned above or connected via 
	the network.  With the network connection just write a appropriate
	printer model.  Have a look at the protocol described in RFC1179.
	There are many ways of connecting printers via ethernet, ranging
	from using PC's as printer servers to buying dedicated hardware.


>Any other details or pointers would also be greatly appreciated.

>Thanks in advance

>Ian J 				email: ijohnston@cmutual.com.au
>-- 
>Ian Johnston                                 email: IJohnston@cmutual.com.au
>UNIX System Admin.                           phone: +61-3-6076448
>Colonial Mutual Life Aust. (ACN 004021809)   fax  : +61-3-6076198

There are many ways of addressing the problem, depending on all the usuals
of facilities required, exisiting facilities to be supported and cost.




regards




-- 
Rob Logie                         | The opions expressed are mine alone and in
AOTC  ( A.C.N. 051 775 556 )      | no-way reflect the views or policies of the
TNE Computer Support Services     | Australian and Overseas Telecommunications
EMAIL: logier@cheops.qld.tne.oz.au| Corporation. "These are my opinions alone"

logier@cheops.qld.tne.oz.au (Rob Logie) writes:

>>	1) Has anyone connected a IBM bus/tag protocol printer (preferably
>>       Xerox) to a UNIX host or TCP/IP terminal server?  If so please
>>       send me details.

>	Probably the cheapest option would be to buy a new interface for
>	the printer.  The Pyramids have a "DataProducts" interface for 
>	high speed printing, as well as using either direct RS232 type 
>	connections (They can run to 38 k if you are lucky).  Also a centronics
>	interface is avaliable for the xmi card.  If you still need to 
>	get access to the printers from the SNA side, Pyramid have  
>	32xx emulation cards/software avaliable.

>There are many ways of addressing the problem, depending on all the usuals
>of facilities required, exisiting facilities to be supported and cost.

>-- 
>Rob Logie                         | The opions expressed are mine alone and in
>AOTC  ( A.C.N. 051 775 556 )      | no-way reflect the views or policies of the
>TNE Computer Support Services     | Australian and Overseas Telecommunications
>EMAIL: logier@cheops.qld.tne.oz.au| Corporation. "These are my opinions alone"

This is likely correct, except the hardware is a called a Spur Adapter and 
is sold by Xerox. It converts a Centronics parallel interface to an IBM 
channel interface (this interface may well be the last pair of buss and tag
cables left in our shop!). It of course costs the moon (around $10,000 as I
recall), but then so did the printer so that shouldn't be a problem.
	As I recall a 9700 does better than 100 pages a minite (its smaller
brother, the 4090, that we have does 92 pages a minite) so it needs a little 
more data than 38k (a channel will drive it at about 1 megabyte / sec), a VAX 
running over ethernet through a terminal server into a Centronics port (because
the VAX Dataproducts interface we have is slow) will drive it reasonably hard.
This may be an option for you it the Pyramid DataPoducts is too slow (I know
nothing of Pyramids so there may be no problem). Now if the Spur just let
you execute arbitrary  channel programs so we could get mainframe 3420s and
3480's onto an ethernet ...

Peter Van Epp / Operations and Technical Support 
Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C. Canada

In article <1992Aug17.060351.13234@cmutual.com.au> icj@cmutual.com.au (Ian Johnston) writes:
[...]

>	1) Has anyone connected a IBM bus/tag protocol printer (preferably
>       Xerox) to a UNIX host or TCP/IP terminal server?  If so please
>       send me details.
>
We have used a product from Dataware Development in San Diego
tel - (619) 453-7660

They make a product which turns a a PC into a bus and tag "print server".
You buy a bus/tag card (from them) that gets put into the PC and you can
print regular files to the bus/tag printer from the PC.

The great thing about this is that they have another product (called
Autoprint) which will print anything found in a specific directory and then
delete it.  This means you can set up a quasi spooling capability.  On top
of that, it does not interfere with network operations on the PC so you can
put an ethernet card in the PC WITH the bus/tag card and automatically mount
a directory using NFS on a remote host.  If you set Autoprint to use this
directory as its "spooling" directory, you only have to copy the file into
the directory on the remote and it will be printed and deleted (or copied
elsewhere for backup).

   I don't know the volume of printing you're talking about but we use it
this way and while our company is small we do a lot of printing (two
4075's which will prob be upgraded to a 4090)

   We haven't tried this with postscript files but I'm 99% sure it would
pose no problems since postscript is just ascii text.  If you need to pass
through some sort of graphics file from a postscript interpreter (since
Xerox doesn't seem to support postscript at the printer level very much), I
don't know, but again, I bet it works.
-- 
                          "It's INCONCEIVABLE !!!!"
          "I do not think that word means what you think it means."
                                          --- from "Princess Bride"