Brother DCP-1612W Is there any chance it will print and scan well?

[T-Aoki]

They can, with a little hep - that's what's Ghostscript is for.
gs -sDEVICE=escp -sOutputFile=output.prn input.pdf
One can even throw in resolution of their printer with adding -r240x72 or whatever actual res is for the printer we want to output to.

Ah, I mean, sending data "directly" via Centronix pararrel interface without any filters like ghostscript and/or print servers which can convert inputs to the actual printing language the printer understands.

With ghostscript, it would work.

 

[vmisev]

Ah, I mean, sending data "directly" via Centronix pararrel interface without any filters like ghostscript and/or print servers which can convert inputs to the actual printing language the printer understands.

With ghostscript, it would work.

I started using Ghostscript in the early '90s to be able to "proper" print on then new Winprinter lasers, which didn't have much of (if any) processing in them, everything was rendered on Win PC by the driver and then processed bitmap sent to the laser. They were first laser printers to be very cheap, because they had very little electronics in them, and started do be quite popular in offices from AFAIR ~'93/'94. Ghostsricpt was great because one could insert it seamlessly between Win app and actual printer driver, with no apparent change for the user, if you set gs as default.

P.S. Use case (one of many): User uses MS Word to write let's say financial report, but their app for financial modeling was saving graphs as EPS. User imports EPS in the Word, when printed text looks okay, but graphs are worse than on dot-matrix, because only 72x72 DPI screen preview is outputted on non-PS printer. gs to save the day (and make me some $'s for field day )

 

[Maturin]

Note that quite old dot-matrix printers (ESC/P driven, and so on) cannot process PS, PDF

yes...also daisy wheel, typeball, and line printers cannot only not process PS, PDF, but are also incapable of graphics (dot-matrix graphics - just for to prevent some weisenheimer come with:"ASCII Art!")

via Centronix pararrel interface without any filters

...yes. My last machine had a centronics interface I dumped thirty years ago...
This is exactly the point now for somebody cut in to bring up she or he still uses a centronics interface for to connect her or his DEC's tube heating, Mark 2 Colossus relay stockpile, or Zuse's flintstone polisher to her or his telegraph sounder, and that (in theory) a parallel interface is a pretty neat idea, and for what it still could be all useful to, although 99.9999% (sorry, I didn't do the eaxt count of those beans, but let meself carried away to estimate) we either have USB devices and WLAN connections, while some few ignorant foolish old-timers like me still have their printer connected via LAN (without W, but with a cable!)...time to point out for somebody else there also are bluetooth printers...

 

[vmisev]

yes...also daisy wheel, typeball, and line printers cannot only not process PS, PDF, but are also incapable of graphics (dot-matrix graphics - just for to prevent some weisenheimer come with:"ASCII Art!")

Modern line matrix printers like Printronix P8000 Plus, especially P8C20 are perfectly capable of printing PDF & PS (and few other standard industry formats) at 120x144 dpi, at max 2000lpm while cost per page if 1/5 of laser output, and they come with USB, RS-232 and Ethernet (optional 802.1X and IPv6)

 

[T-Aoki]

Modern line matrix printers like Printronix P8000 Plus, especially P8C20 are perfectly capable of printing PDF & PS (and few other standard industry formats) at 120x144 dpi, at max 2000lpm while cost per page if 1/5 of laser output, and they come with USB, RS-232 and Ethernet (optional 802.1X and IPv6)

Oh, never know that!
As far as I know, legacy (non-laser) line printers had font "belt" or "drum" and a line is completed to be printed oncd the belt or drum rotate once, with impacters aligned per all character positions and hits when required character comes.

Is line matrix printer does something like inline pins iike in printing head of dot-matrix printers?

 

[covacat]

windows printer driver require that the driver implements at minimum BitBlt (or maybe StrechBlt / can't really remember).
all unimplemented graphics primitives like lines, arcs, text,etc are supplied by GDI itself and GDI then sends a bitmap to the driver.
If the raster format that the printer needed was proprietary you are usually screwed on freebsd (sometimes you can easily adapt the linux converter if it exists)
So did early "GDI printers" even dir >prn won't work, the printer did not know how to print text, had no fonts etc.it was in fact a kind of digital copier without the scanner.
We the advent of IPP / AirPrint now the raster format is known so it's a bit easier.

the fax-modem drivers that you used to print to fax were probably the earliest example of a really dumb printer

 

[vmisev]

Oh, never know that!
As far as I know, legacy (non-laser) line printers had font "belt" or "drum" and a line is completed to be printed oncd the belt or drum rotate once, with impacters aligned per all character positions and hits when required character comes.

Is line matrix printer does something like inline pins iike in printing head of dot-matrix printers?

People are mostly aware of (now obsolete) chain printers like IBM 1403 and drum printers like Dataproducts 2230 (link to PDF). They could print only characters, sorta like daisy wheel.

Line matrix are different,

A line matrix printer prints page-wide lines of dots at a time, building up a line of text by printing lines of dots.
...
a line matrix printer uses a hammer bank (or print-shuttle) instead of print head. This print-shuttle has hammers instead of print wires

Wikipedia page has nice explanation Line matrix printer, and some more details here (a bit outdated on capacity, resolution and speeds, they are all higher nowadays): PC Mag / line matrix printer

Printronix Printhead

This printhead contains seven sets of print hammers that oscillate back and forth to cover 16" wide paper. The hammers are held back by magnets. The hammer is demagnetized and springs forward onto the ribbon. As it recoils, it is remagnetized back in place. (Original drawing courtesy of Printronix, Inc.)

 

[vmisev]

windows printer driver require that the driver implements at minimum BitBlt (or maybe StrechBlt / can't really remember).
all unimplemented graphics primitives like lines, arcs, text,etc are supplied by GDI itself and GDI then sends a bitmap to the driver.
If the raster format that the printer needed was proprietary you are usually screwed on freebsd (sometimes you can easily adapt the linux converter if it exists)
So did early "GDI printers" even dir >prn won't work, the printer did not know how to print text, had no fonts etc.it was in fact a kind of digital copier without the scanner.
We the advent of IPP / AirPrint now the raster format is known so it's a bit easier.

the fax-modem drivers that you used to print to fax were probably the earliest example of a really dumb printer

AFAIK first "dumb" and cheap laser with external processing was Atari SLM804 ('87). Page processing was done on Mega ST (to print graphics, it needed 4M RAM), but computer was totally locked up while printing, you couldn't do anything else. A year later software PS interpreter UltraScript ST-1 was available, it came with few PS fonts, but it was very cumbersome to use.

 

[T-Aoki]

Line matrix are different,

Ah, it is what I wanted to explain!
And if I recall correctly, recent laser (or LED) line printers would be the same category with different mechanims, more alike digital copier using tonor.

 

[vmisev]

Ah, it is what I wanted to explain!
And if I recall correctly, recent laser (or LED) line printers would be the same category with different mechanims, more alike digital copier using tonor.

I'm not aware of any Laser that can be called "line printer" don't even know how it could be done, generally there is one beam of light reflected of rotating polygonal mirror that goes across the drum and charges it.

LED printers are similar to line matrix in that they do have few rows of LEDs across paper width, but again they are charging drum which attracts toner, and at the end that paper must go through classic fuser to melt toner and permanently stick it to paper. LEDs can be faster than lasers, but all that I know off are using cut-sheet paper only, up to SRA3. And they can't make carbon copies.

For example, if company needs to print more than 400000 invoices per month (all properly addressed to different recipients) with company logo and QR codes and some other graphics elements, line matrix printers are cheapest (TOC) and smartest solution, esp. because they can do up to 5 or 6 carbon copies while printing original.

When talking about digital large scale, large volume printing that is not line matrix nor inkjet, French folks have very interesting tech - magnetography and cold xenon flash fusing, please check Nipson Techology, but unfortunately I never saw one IRL.

 

[covacat]

we had a drum printer in high school
huge, noisy, high performance, text only, shitty quality, a3 endless paper / tractor
made by a joint venture between Control Data (CDC) and ro govt
it had this technology bug/feature

we joked that to draw a sinewave just print "*******************************************" and you'll get one

the mainframe it was hooked to was a clone of french IRIS mainframes of the 1960
runtime errors will dump core in hexa to the printer

 

[vmisev]

we had a drum printer in high school
huge, noisy, high performance, text only, shitty quality, a3 endless paper / tractor
made by a joint venture between Control Data (CDC) and ro govt
it had this technology bug/feature
View attachment 23689
we joked that to draw a sinewave just print "*******************************************" and you'll get one

the mainframe it was hooked to was a clone of french IRIS mainframes of the 1960
runtime errors will dump core in hexa to the printer

View attachment 23688

Thanks for that info, IDK about CII (Compagnie Internationale d'Informatique) Iris mainframes

Only Iris that I knew about and used at $DAYJOB was Iris Graphics Inc Iris printer, a large-format drum color inkjet printer designed for prepress proofing and fine arts reproductions.