[Coco] Printing on a Coco with modern printers.

[Louis Ciotti]

I think in the end for it to be practical we are looking at having some
sort of custom "black" box or program running on a modern computer that
will take what ever the coco sends out of its standard port and do the
conversion to what ever a modern printer needs.


On Fri, Jan 10, 2014 at 2:09 PM, Aaron Wolfe <aawolfe at gmail.com> 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.
>
> 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?).
>
> --
> Coco mailing list
> Coco at maltedmedia.com
> http://five.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/coco
>