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Re: [TCLUG:892] LaserWriter II on a PC?



On Tue, 11 Aug 1998, Tim Wilson wrote:

> Someone donated an old Apple LaserWriter II printer to our computer lab
> effort. I'm wondering if it's possible to it with a PC and Linux? It's
> got
> two ports on the back that look like parallel ports, but I think they're
> SCSI ports (not sure about that, though).

The Apple printers I've seen (mostly newer than your LaserWriter II) have
Centronics SCSI ports, so maybe those are parallel ports. But they could
well be Mac SCSI ports; I dunno.

> There's also a serial port. I guess that's probably Appletalk.

Appletalk is a network protocol, not a hardware interface. That probably
is a serial port. You can get Mac-to-PC serial adaptors (I have one
myself).

> Is this possible?

I should think so. Just have to find a good printer filter for it under
Linux. Is it Postscript?

> We do have an old Mac SE. Can you put Linux on one of
> the old Macs? If so, I could probably use it as a print server.

Yeah, I think MkLinux will run on any m68k chip. I know NetBSD is an
option for you, also.

Old Macs are sooo cool...

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