[Coco] Printing on a Coco with modern printers.

[Luis Antoniosi (CoCoDemus)]

Thats the turing machine principle....
On 2014-01-11 11:28 AM, "John Donaldson" <johnab8yz at verizon.net> wrote:

> I once read an article that stated that the most simple computer can do
> anything a larger faster computer can do as long as the simple computer has
> enough memory and you can wait a long long time for it to crunch the
> numbers.
>
> John Donaldson
>
>
>
> On 1/9/2014 6:24 PM, Al Hartman wrote:
>
>> I don't agree that a Coco or a Coco 3 isn't powerful enough to print to
>> modern printers. It might assemble a page more slowly than a modern
>> computer, and might not be able to rasterize a full page at high resolution
>> due to memory constraints, but there's no reason a Coco can't print text or
>> graphics at usual CoCo resolutions to a modern printer.
>>
>> 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'm not saying anyone is going to write them, it would be a huge task.
>> But, back in the day I used to use EPStart on my Atari-ST that emulated an
>> Apple Imagewriter on an Epson Printer by rasterizing the pages and using
>> the printer's hi-res graphics to print. And there were PostScript solutions
>> as well.
>>
>> My ideal solution is to move the client end of DW from the bit-banger
>> port to a faster, dedicated port that could be put internal to the Coco,
>> and free up the bit-banger for a serial to parallel adapter to print to
>> vintage printers.
>>
>> It would be much easier to mod the one piece of DW client software to
>> support a new port, than to rewrite hundreds of apps to print through DW.
>> This handles both OS-9/NitrOS9 and RSDOS apps transparently.
>>
>> Plus, we'd get the benefit of turbo mode operation even on an older Coco
>> 1.
>>
>> -[ Al ]-
>>
>> --
>> Coco mailing list
>> Coco at maltedmedia.com
>> http://five.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/coco
>>
>>
>
> --
> Coco mailing list
> Coco at maltedmedia.com
> http://five.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/coco
>