what printers work with amiga 1200

[Pat the Cat]

Ah, this is where Linux comes in handy.
(You can also do this with Windows/Mac, but it's built in to Linux)

I got my wife a Panasonic Network enabled laser printer a bit ago.  Wasn't thinking about the Amiga at the time.  After it arrived, (and she loves it) I realized.. D'oh!  It's not postscript..

But I run Linux, so not a problem.  Linux generally comes with Ghostscript.
What is that.  Basically, it's a postscript interpreter...  But one of the neat features...  It's also a postscript to Linux printer queue basically.

So, any print job I can send to the queue that is postscript, it will automatically translate it and print it on whatever printer I have defined.

So I load up the Linux driver for this printer, and share it.  (Linux (Ubuntu) currently uses CUPS for managing printing)

For testing, I load the Adobe Postscript driver for windows and point it at my Linux box (i.e. new print server) using IPP...
And ta da, postscript from my Windows box to my Linux box, and from my Linux box to the printer and it prints.

So I go to the Amiga and I download netparlpr.
Basically, it lets me define a network printer and it replaced the parallel.device with it's own.
So I do that and..  er..LPR??  Not IPP?  Hmm..
Never fear..
That's still in Linux, its just disabled nowadays.
So I add one  line to my inetd.conf file to enable LPR.

OK, that taken care of, I set it up.  Point it at my linux box with my shared printer name (Laser).  I tell my Amiga to use parallel and Postscript and print from FinalWriter..
And..  Error..  Hmm..
OK, I find the actual Postscript file it created and load it in a postsript viewer in Linux and...  Error..
OK, Linux doesn't like FinalWriter's postscript files..  But does postscript work?
I fire up SysInfo and print..
Ta Da!!  
Ok, but that's text..  I fire up Personal Paint and print postscript..
Beautiful B/W clown pic!

OK, I download Wordworth 7 and print postscript...
TaDA!!!  Yay!!
It's just FinalWriter that it doesn't like...

Yes..  But what if I want to print color?
Well, I also have an Epson R300 on that Linux box (USB).  So, I share that printer as well (named R300).
I go to the netparlpr install and it allows me to reconfigure, so I do and just add another printer.
Then I go into a SHELL and use a command like:
setenv NETPAR/forgottenvarialename 1
(OK, I forgot what it was.. but, basically, I set it to 1 which is the new printer.)
I print..  It's on the new printer.
I reset the variable to 0 and it prints on the laser...

So ANY printer I can print to from Linux, I can print to from my Amiga.
I really don't have to worry about Amiga drivers anymore.  I just choose Postscript.

Now, if you don't like setenv, it apparently integrates with TurboPrint and something called prt42_50 (on Aminet) for a graphical way to select printers...

desiv
I'm actually considering getting a Raspberry Pi for some general stuff (ssh, web, etc) and it would be great for this I think..

Good stuff. I might give that a whirl, been wondering how to go about 21st century offset litho using retro software. Real book printing, that kind of thing.

Cheapest way I found to print with an Amiga and old daisy wheel or dot matrix with no ribbon was to use carbon paper and hand feed each sheet, so you could say I'm keen to explore the higher budget options too.