[Coco] Printing on a Coco with modern printers.

[Aaron Wolfe]

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.

While technically true, the "problem" is that what the printer needs
is an enormous (for the coco) amount of information.

Take a typical color printer in the $50 price range... you're looking
at 600dpi x 24 bits (rgb) = just about a megabyte of information per
square inch.
Over 90MB per page!  My NitrOS9 hard drive is only 64MB (and its
nowhere near full despite having quite a bit of software installed).

Assuming you are going to use the bitbanger to print this (and you
have room/time to generate 90MB of information on your coco), you are
looking at 7 *days* to transfer this data (at 1200bps, iirc that is
stock coco printer speed?).