[rescue] Re: SBE/S

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

On Sun, 5 May 2002, Joshua D Boyd wrote:

> Serial?  Parallel?  USB? Haven't gotten around to buying myself a nice
> laser yet, but while ethernet may be nice, it would be one of the
> first features I'd be willing to sacrifice (since Sun's with parallel
> ports are cheap).

Yeah, but getting those ports to work under NetBSD hasn't been fun for
me--I just get garbage[1].  And, once you have a network printer, you
won't want to go back.  You just plug it in the wall, and it works, since
almost all of them to PostScript natively.

> Eww, whats the point of a color laser if it can't do nice continuous
> tone printing?

Can any -laser- printer do continuous-tone printing?  I always thought
that the individual dot intensity was at 100%, and you simulated tone
through dithering.  That is, unless I'm completely misunderstanding the
mechanics behind the interaction of toner with the laser and fuser.

Besides, once you hit 1200dpi, you usually don't even have to pretend too
hard that it's continuous tone.

> What I really would love is a nice Iris large format printer.

Ooooh.  Shiny.

> But, I've never seen a working one for sale, and considering the
> operating costs, it doesn't look likely to happen.

True enough.  I'm happy with my LaserJet 6L, though.  Or rather, I -will-
be happy with it once the rollers are working properly again.  I'm tempted
to fix it, sell it, and "Get a Real Printer"(TM).

--Jonathan
[1] And this doesn't looks like a case of GIGO.