New printers on old computers?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Laura Cooper
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Laura Cooper

Are all the printers newer than, say, 1995 dependent on the speed of the
computer for their output speed?

My 100MHz Pentium machine at home does what we need it to do, but we could
use a printer with more dependable paper-handling functions. Our HP
Laserjet 5L has to be hand-fed.

At one point, I bought a Xerox color printer, but it was as slow as a slug
on the 100MHz computer. It works at an acceptable speed on my 2GB computer
(formerly my 400MHz computer) at work.
 
You'd be better off if you didn't need color. Look for a plain vanilla
laserprinter (hp 1300) say, that has a parallel port interface. These are
not Winprinters (printers which use the CPU of the computer to do a part of
the printing job)

You'd save money with the HP 1012, but that has only USB, which you don't
have.

Link to full specs:
http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/e...51-236263-14638-f13-238320-238322-238323.html

Notice, in particular, that the printer is compatible with DOS--this is the
spec you should look for in other printer lines.
 
Laura Cooper said:
Are all the printers newer than, say, 1995 dependent on the speed of the
computer for their output speed?
Click to expand...

It depends mostly on what you're intending to print, based on the format
(PCL, postscript, raw text, emulations, GDI, etc.). An original 4.77 mhz
IBM PC can keep a fast laser printer going at full speed via parallel port
with text output. The latest greatest 3+GHz machine might slow to a crawl
when outputting a hi-res color graphic. The speed of the cpu and interface
matter too (both on the PC and the printer itself), but only relative to the
size and complexity of the output format. Because printers often support
more than one format, it's helpful to know the specific characteristics of
the formats in case you can choose or configure your printer driver to pick
the best one for the intended purpose. A better generalization might be
that large and/or complex graphic formats are more dependent on the speed of
the cpu and interface than simple ones.
 
Laura Cooper said:
Are all the printers newer than, say, 1995 dependent on the speed of the
computer for their output speed?

My 100MHz Pentium machine at home does what we need it to do, but we could
use a printer with more dependable paper-handling functions. Our HP
Laserjet 5L has to be hand-fed.
Click to expand...

If your able to take things apart, go to www.fixyourownprinter.com
and order their repair kit for the multi-page feeding problem. The
rubber in the seperator pad they supply is stickier than the original
and fixes the problem for a long time. I've repaired many printers
using their kit which comes with full instruction on how to do the
job, takes only an hour.
 
There is a fix kit available for your HP LJ 5L's Multifeed problem. If you are
not very handy, you coudl order a fix it from here:

http://www.fixyourownprinter.com/kkg0.html

It comes with an instructional video which is worth the price if you have never
done printer repair before.

If you don't need instruction and want to tackle the problem without
instruction, try LaserPros International at:

888-558-5277, ext 122.

You coudl order the Separation Pad and Sub pads for less than $10 plus S&H.

D.
 
....[snip]....
Notice, in particular, that the printer is compatible with DOS--this is the
spec you should look for in other printer lines.
....[snip]....
Click to expand...

Besides reading the box, one good sign of DOS compability is
"uses a parallel port" or "parallel-port cable needed"!

I recently purchased an HP DeskJet 3820 for my DOS machine (will hook it
to Windows someday through an automatic switch when I get two more cables)
and have been quite happy with it.

The DOS software supplied on the accompanying CD-ROM is fairly limited:
Do you want to print:
Portrait or landscape?
Really nice, so, or econo-fast (those aren't their actual words!)
Regular or condensed printing?
Lines per page
Characters per line
(and maybe another choice or three)
but, since it is PCL (Printer Control Language) driven, (at least some;
haven't tried nearly all of them yet!) other commands work; although you
have to figure out a way to send them (.BAT files, ECHO command, BASIC,
self-written software, etc.) the most-difficult part of all methods is
remembering how to produce an ESCAPE character!

The HP PCL "Technical Reference Manual" on CD-ROM cost less than $10, but
is VERY difficult to buy from HP (although it is featured on one of their
websites) and requires a more up-to-date PDF reader than ACRODOS; however,
I can read it on my Windows machine.

Compared to the old/odd dot-matrix printers I've been using since time
immemorial, I really like the DeskJet and heartily recommend it. I bought
the printer in mid October, 2003 and don't print all that much, but (knock
on wood) the original cartridges haven't run out yet!

--Myron.
 
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