[Coco] Printing on a Coco with modern printers.

[George Ramsower]

On 1/10/2014 1:09 PM, Aaron Wolfe wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 10, 2014 at 1:50 PM, George Ramsower <georgera at gvtc.com> wrote:
>
>>> Cocomax, CGDP, ColorMax and other programs printed hi-res (for a Coco)
>>> text
>>> and graphics to a wide range of printers. There's no reason that they
>>> could
>>> not do so today.
>>>
>>> All that's needed are drivers.
>>>
>>> ===================================================
>>   I have to agree to a point on this. I've built files to print that were too
>> large for memory. I saved that file info to the hard disk and then used that
>> file and routed it to the printer. I would think the same thing could be
>> done with one of the modern printers. All that's needed is a utility to
>> convert the info to whatever the printer needs and send that info to a
>> storage device and then send it to the printer as we have time. The
>> conversion would be slow but the actual printing could be as fast as the
>> coco can muster up.
>
  Wow!! I wasn't thinking about that. Just the text would be the same as 
graphics. It's a pixel thing and this would make for a huge file.
  However, if we used a modern printer, 1200 baud would not be used when 
9600 baud would be the standard. However, even at 9600 baud, a 90 meg 
file would still take a day to send that data. Actually a little over 26 
hrs if the printer has a buffer.
  Yeah, I think using a PC would be the answer to this delima. 
Otherwise, I'll stick with my dot matrix printer and they are still 
available.