what printers work with amiga 1200

[AAACHIPSET]

decided id start to look at adding a printer to my setup ..never ever had one
on any amiga before ..anyone suggest a easy to use ..generic drivers avail  etc for my 1200 ..wont be fancy printing  like photos  ..but printing info  text type files would be handy ..

[Lurch]

The star Micronics dot matrix printers that came in a bundle with the A500/A1200. Not sure about any other's that directly connect to the Amiga as I use a network printer these days.

I have an HP LaserJet 6P, old laser but still does a great job. Under Amiga OS 3.9 I had no issues getting it to work.

[ChaosLord]

All my printers worked great.
The only printers I ever used on my Amiga were:
1985-1988?  Star Micronics Gemini 10x b&w dot matrix printer.  Very loud.

1989? - 1994? Hewlett Packard HP Deskjet 500 b&w 300dpi x 300dpi Inkjet printer.  Very quiet and much sharper than the old Gemini 10x

1994+ Hewlett Packard Laserjet 4M 600x600 dpi laser printer.  This model has built in Postscript(tm).

Any printer with built-in PostScript will work wonderfully with the Amiga for sure.

Otherwise you have to somehow check compatibility.  There was a guy who made superduper awesome printer drivers for Amiga until around 2001 or so?
I forgot what his collection of printer drivers was called though?  Maybe Turboprint?

[AAACHIPSET]

thanks  gives me a couple brands to look out for ..my neighbour  collects old stuff  couple printers in there ..might get lucky..

[paul1981]

You'll need a printer with a parallel port....this instantly means you'll need a printer that's 10 years old or more. Unless those modern usb/parallel converters work? Has anyone tried them before? They've been out years but I've never heard of anyone using them. If they did work, then would it be just a matter of using the Postscript driver on the Amiga side?
It'd be :cool: to have a modern printer hooked up. I used to use an Epson Stylus Photo (bloody heads always clogged up) and then a HP Deskjet 600 which someone gave to me (much more reliable).

[Xanxi]

USB printers can easily be used if you have an USB card and Poseidon. Some HP printers seem to be usable with Gillo's USB stak Anaiis. The only problem is to find a driver. Turboprint can help.
Unfortunaly i have a SAMSUNG laser printer that uses a proprietary system called SPL, instead if Postscript. Would like to find a solution.

[Matt_H]

TurboPrint can be bought here. CD availability is new - it was sold only on floppies when I bought it a couple years ago.

Another driver package to look out for is StudioII by Wolf Faust. He also has a free set of Canon drivers (see CanonDisk on Aminet) that has pretty good support for late 90s/early2000s Canon printers.

There are also scattered individual drivers kicking around Aminet.

[barney]

Old Okidata printers and Dot Matrix Citizen printers also work nice.

[LoadWB]

I used an old HP DeskJet 500, which has a parallel port.  T'was nice.

If you have a network card and TCP/IP stack on your 1200, you can use lpr.device (or equivalent) to print to a network printer supporting both the LPR and RAW (essentially JetDirect) protocols.  I used it to print to my HP LaserJet 4050 with JetDirect card, DeskJet 882c on a LPR print server, and another non-HP network printer which escapes memory at this time.

[ChaosLord]

I used an old HP DeskJet 500, which has a parallel port.  T'was nice.

That is the one I had.   I loved that printer!  But my HP LaserJet 4M blew it away so I gave the DeskJet to my dad.

My dad no longer uses that printer and I should prob try to get it back from him to donate to a worthy Amiganaut.

[danwood]

thanks  gives me a couple brands to look out for ..my neighbour  collects old stuff  couple printers in there ..might get lucky..

Always had look with Canon Bubblejets from the early-mid 90s, the BJ10e/ex/sx machines, the BJ30, BJC models that use parallel.  Cannon supplied software and drivers you can still download from Aminet:

http://aminet.net/package/driver/print/CanonDisk398d

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

I got away from dot matrix and got an HP LaserJet 4 for my first A500 around 17 years ago. Funny thing is, even though I sold that computer years ago I still have the printer, and if I boot one of that A500's WB discs, there it still remains, set as the default device.

[Ral-Clan]

I got away from dot matrix and got an HP LaserJet 4 for my first A500 around 17 years ago. Funny thing is, even though I sold that computer years ago I still have the printer, and if I boot one of that A500's WB discs, there it still remains, set as the default device.

I used a Canon BJC4000 series printer (they made a few in the 4000 series) which worked well with TurboPrint.

You can refill these ink cartridges too, with generic printer ink refills.

However, the electronically activated inkjets in the cartridge heads wear out over time, so you'll get a good few refills out of them, but eventually it may become hard to track down new ink cartridges.

Ribbon printers are good, because often if you cannot find a replacement cartridge, the actual cloth ribbon inside is standard width, so you can just buy a ribbon cartridge for some currently supported dot matrix printer (yes, there still are for business purposes) and crack the two ribbon cartridges open and do a "ribbon transplant".

I know this because I'm a VIC-20 user as well - and getting ribbons for old 1982 era commodore printers is even harder.

[danbeaver]

1) The LPT2USB device works fine for printers as that is what it was designed for. I used mine until I got my network up and now can access 3 modern printers in my office. The HP Inkjet does not use postscript. I use postscript from FinalWriter and PageStream with their built in drivers. Otherwise I use GhostScript. However I only use true Postscript several times a year. The standard "old" Amiga drivers work fine for mainline printers.

2) TurboPrint works well in OS 3.9 and 4.1; they have not updated it in almost 10 years as they now support Linux. Their "drivers" are in plain English and should be adjustable, but I can't figure it out.

3) A USB solution will access a lot of printers, but on the A1200 availability may be an issue (that is why I initially opted for the LPT2USB dongle).

4) The best solution for me was getting Network access. The AmigaKit folks sell a whole setup and even modern low range printers have it. A network "switch" -- 30 bucks US and a "Wireless Bridge" -- 40 bucks US will connect d_amn near anything. The info on the LPT.device says that it does not work with AmiTCP (part on EasyNet).  You will find it in the Aminet archive, and it works perfectly with RoadShow and Miami.

[desiv]

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..