Conference hydra::amiga_v1

    You need an LA50 printer driver. Needless to say, there is no LA50
    printer driver supplied with the Amiga (see Preferences). However,
    you can create a custom printer driver for the LA50. I do not now
    how to go about doing that, but you might give Mike a call at the
    Memory Location. He wrote the Canon PJ-1080A printer driver -- so
    he might be able to help you out. There is also a commercial program
    available that helps you write printer drivers without any programming
    knowledge. Check some of the Amiga rags for the name of it.
    
    Paul
    

    You may want to check note 14.0 . I am looking for a driver for
    a Olivetti PR 2300 myself,and note 14 while directed toward the
    LA50 was informative .The Computer Mart of N.H. in Nashua had a
    disk loaded with different printer drivers but when I went down
    to check someone had walked off with it along with several other
    public domain disks .however the fact that the disk was there at
     one time indicates that there are drivers out in the public domain
     that may help .I am in the process of searching available pd disk
     in an effort to find info on print drivers,and while I haven't
     found any I have come across several print programs .If anyone
    should come across any driver sources will you please post them
    to this note
    
    thanks,
    bill 

    
    	I have written a LA50 driver. Currently it is TEXT only and
    I am still working on a bug. I plan to add the graphics functions
    this weekend. In any case I will have a copy ready Monday 
    ( Dec 15 ).
    
    			Steve Peters
    

    The Brother printer driver will work with an LA50.

What kind of cable is required, and where do you get it?  It would be nice if 
the modem cable would work.

	Paul

    
    Re. 193.4
    
    	The Brother print driver will work text only, but I need the
    graphics also. I have a work text only LA50 driver and I started
    adding the graphics part. I should have it work soon ( if I can
    find the time ).
    
    Re. 193.5
    	The cable I use is a Null Modem cable with most of the wires
    cut. The cable work well with only 4 wires left. I will check
    which wires are left and post a note.
    
    		Steve Peters
    

Re: .6

I would appreciate the info about which pins.  I asked at the Memory Location, 
but they had no idea how to cable a printer to the serial port.  I also looked 
for pin usage info in my LA50 manual and found NOTHING!  (This seems to be one 
of DEC's poorer manuals.)

By the way, exactly how is a null modem cable constructed?  I gather it 
crosses a few of the wires, but which ones?

	Paul

    
    For LA50 cable info see note 14 (reply 2 I believe).
    
    steve mcafee

    
    	I have just finished a LA50 printer driver. The driver has all
    the normal ESC sequences ( text mode ) and supports graphics. I
    tested the driver with PageSetter and Dpaint. The driver is a little
    slow in graphics mode ( I hope to solve this soon ) but works well.
    
    			Steve Peters
    

    What a bummer!  I was working on one for my LA100 the past two nights. 
    I just got everything to compile successfully last night, but it
    was so late I went to bed without trying to link.
    
    I would like to get a copy of your driver as soon as you make it
    available.  Also, a copy of your render.c if you don't mind.  I
    thought the documentation wasn't all that bad, as I didn't have
    all that much trouble understanding what was needed.  Of course
    mine didn't run yet :-).
    
    regards
    
    steve mcafee
    

    
    
    	The LA50 driver and source code ia available in
    
    		ELWOOD::USER2:[PETERS.AMIGA.LA50]
    
    	The driver was uploaded using kermit in binary mode. Please
    let me know if it was transfered right.
    
    		Steve Peters
    

re:	.11

Steve:	I get a downloaded size of 2082 bytes... is this correct?

	It works ok on text, but seems to hang on graphics (I tried
	a "PRINT" from DPaint).

	Is there a simple test I could run, like a screen dump?

	If possible, please ARC the driver before uploading.... that way
	we can be sure of checksums and alike.

	Also, what preference choices should be set (to what levels)?

thanks!
dave

    
    	The size it should be is 2072 bytes. I'll try to find ARC and
    transfer it again. Any idea where to get ARC ( Fred Fish ? ) ?
    
    	It should work with Dpaint. I used pagesetter for most of my
    tests.
    
    		Steve Peters
    

    
    	ARCed version of LA50 is available same place
    
    		ELWOOD::USER2:[PETERS.AMIGA.LA50]LA50.ARC
    
    	I hope this helps.
    
    		Steve Peters
    

    
    	I did some more tests on the LA50 driver and can't find any
    problems. I printed some pictures from Dpaint with Kickstart 1.1.
    The printer was setup as gray/shading, 4800 baud.
    	I then printed a few pages from Pagesetter with Kickstart 1.2.
    the printer was setup as Black/White, 4800 baud, serial port ( note
    on 1.2 you must select the serial option in preferences ).
    
    
    		Steve Peters
    

I am having trouble with the driver which is driving me crazy.  I have 
installed it and it seems to work, except:

	It seems to print <LF> as if it was followed by a comma.

For a simple test, I just "copy s/startup-sequence to prt:".  What happens is 
that just below and to the end of each line, overstruck on the following line 
is a comma.  I have also tried printing from Scribble! which fails a bit 
differently - the beginning of each line is overstruck with a comma.  I 
believe the difference is probably that <LF><CR> is being sent in the first 
case and <CR><LF> in the second.

Any ideas what could be causing this?  It isn't the printer, because using the 
Brother driver works ok.

	Paul

	I ran into the same problem last night using Superbase the comma's
showed up at the end of each line. The problem is an extra comma in the
new line string of the DATA.C source code (see below).

	   "\012",	/* LF			IND	*/
	   "\012,\015",	/* LF,CR		NEL	*/
                ^
         the extra comma


	I don't have a C compiler so a patched the executable file
(changed the comma into a carriage return) and now it works fine with
text and great with graphics.

				Regards

					Glenn

    
    	I will fix the coma problem tonight and post a new copy. I also
    have done some work to make the graphics printing faster.
    
    		Steve Peters
    

    
    	New version of the LA50 driver is available. The new version
    fixes the coma problem ( small typo ). The new driver also prints
    graphics faster. It is in the same place as the old version
    
    	ELWOOD::user2:[peters.amiga.la50]
    
    	There is a copy of the driver there and a ARC file with the
    driver and all the source code.
    
    		Steve Peters
    

Sorry to tell you this Steve, but your .ARC file is corrupted... please rebuild
(and re-upload)... thanks!

dave

    The ARC file seems good to me.  I used Dave's VT100 Kermit to download
    it!

    
    	I just checked the ARC file and it's OK. I also used VT100 and
    kermit ( file type binary ). The driver is 2072 bytes long.
    
    RE. 20
    Dave, I will send you a copy directly ( on floppy ).
    
    		Steve Peters
    

    
    Maybe he was talking about the LA50. file.  I downloaded that and
    had some problems.  Only once though so it could have been at my
    end.
    
    BTW  the driver works great.
    
    steve mcafee

re:	.20

	OK.. I have egg on my face... the .ARC file is F I N E.... guess who
	SET FILE TYPE BINARY on VMS kermit, but forgot to set IMAGE mode
	transfer on VT100!!!!!

	Just goes to show... simply because you wrote the program, doesn't
	mean you know how to use it!

	Many thanks, and the printer driver is EXCELLENT!

Best regards, and apologies all around,
dave

    
    	A new bug in the LA50 driver has been found. As far as I can
    tell, only people using LA100s see the problem. The problem is in
    printing graphics that have blank lines in them. The byte count
    for the blank line is wrong.
    
    New copy can be found in
    
    	ELWOOD::user2:[peters.amiga.la50]la50_21.arc
    
    
    	While working on the bug fix I have found another way to seep
    it up. I should have a yet faster version in a week.
    
    		Steve Peters
    

Since you're working on improving the driver.... do you do the dithering
or is it handed to you? (I suspect the later)... the problem is that
there is no way to "lighten up" an image.

I've been doing alot of ray traced image printing (big surprise :-) and they
are all comming out too dark (thus not enough contrast (thus lots of detail
lost)). If there is nothing that can be done, I'm going to have to
kludge up the ray tracer to "lighten" images for printing.

Any better ideas?

thanks!
dave

P.S.	Yes I know about the threshold parameter in PREFERENCES... it only
	seems to get used for B/W images not shaded.

    
    	Rep .26
    
    Dave, I'd like to help you, but as you guessed Amiga DOS does the
    dithering. The driver just gets a list of dots.
    
    		Steve Peters
    		Printer driver writer
    
    

    I believe there is a public domain Printer Driver Generator
    available out there.
    

    
    RE .28
    
    	yes, there is a printer driver generator, but it creates TEXT
    only drivers ( no graphics ). Most of the programs I use require
    the graphics modes to print anything. Pagesetter prints entire pages
    as super bitmap pictures. DPaint, Draw, Note, all need graphics
    to print.
    	Also I have been working at making the driver as fast as possible.
    The LA50 driver is written in assembler. 1/4 the size 3 times faster
    and I think I can make it even faster. When I run a performance
    monitor while printing, the printing will use 100% of the CPU.
    
    		Steve peters
    

    When using pagesetter with the la50 driver I get blank lines about
    1 every vertical inch.  Has the la50 driver ever been tested with
    pagesetter?

    You sure it's the LA50 and not Pagesetter itself? Discussion
    on the Usenet seems to indicate that Psetter has troubles
    along the lines of what you mentioned, and it's better to
    use Pageprinter. 

    Yes, use the PagePrint utility supplied with Pagesetter rather than
    the print option withing Pagesetter. The problem is not with PageSetter
    but rather with Wb.

    Pageprint works fine.  Thanks.

    
    I wanted to familiarize myself with the difficulties in using the
    assembler which is shipped with Lattice 3.10.  So I took Steve Peters
    LA50 version 2.1 which is written mostly in assembler and tried
    to port it.  Well I managed to get it to compile, but I then noticed
    that Lattice 3.10 doesn't have an Astartup.obj (only c.o).  So is
    it possible to create printer drivers with Lattice 3.10 or am I
    missing something?  (I tried using c.o and BLINK guru'd.)
    
    Just curious.
    
    regards,
    
    steve mcafee

    
    Steve,
    
    	I'm not sure, but I think Astartup.obj came with the assembler
    too. If so I have the source code for it.
    
    
    	When I wrote the LA50 driver BLINK could not link a print driver
    correctly. I HAD to use ALINK. I beleive that newer versions of
    BLINK have this fixed.
    
    
    
    	Steve Peters