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Home Forums 68kMLA LaserWriter 4/600 PS and MS-DOS/WordPerfect 5.1 — #5
Post #5 by shred
Source Forum68kMLA
CategoryNetworking
Post DateThu, 23 Apr 2009 - 12:55
Original URLhttps://68kmla.org/bb/threads/laserwriter-4-600-ps-and-ms-dos-wordperfect-5-1.17180/
Post
I think you are better off finding an old HP LaserJet or using a more up-market Apple LaserWriter that has (ideally) a parallel port or a standard serial port and supports PCL.

Back in the day, it was possible to print to a PostScript printer from the DOS versions of WordPerfect and MS Word, however the drivers weren't pretty and it definitely wasn't easy to get going - particularly if the users wanted to do anything fancy with extra trays of features on the printer. With PostScript, you also lost some nice features that DOS users relied on, like the ability to "Print Screen" or pipe DOS directories and other data to the printer. If it's a serial printer, expect to get familiar with the yukky "mode" statement in DOS.

A little trivia. At the time that the PS/2 machines were popular, Apple themselves made an ISA LocalTalk network card for DOS. It had a DB-9 (Mac 128 style) port. I don't recall seeing a MicroChannel Architecture (MCA) version, so it was limited to the low end PS/2 machines such as the Model 30 286 (or IBM clones). The card came with a full suite of file sharing and print sharing drivers for DOS to allow a PC to become a client in an all Mac LAN. I can't remember what Apple called it now, but really wish I'd kept one of them (I threw a few out at one stage in my mis-spent youth!). The solution worked reliably, but unfortunately consumed large amounts of conventional memory, severely limiting its usefulness.

mp.ls