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From: myke@phluffy.fks.lan (Mike Holling) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: Printing graphics on old Epson FX-80? Date: 31 May 1997 20:45:16 GMT Organization: Telerama Public Access Internet, Pittsburgh, PA Lines: 26 Message-ID: <slrn5p13dm.4q5.myke@phluffy.fks.lan> References: <u8qmm5.v74.ln@dolphin.neosoft.com> <5mpkeh$bob$1@sol.ctr.columbia.edu> Reply-To: myke@lm.com NNTP-Posting-Host: 206.190.135.248 X-Newsreader: slrn (0.9.3.2 UNIX) Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.mira.net.au!news.netspace.net.au!news.mel.connect.com.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.Hawaii.Edu!news.caldera.com!enews.sgi.com!news.corp.sgi.com!news.sgi.com!howland.erols.net!news-peer.sprintlink.net!news-pull.sprintlink.net!news-in-east.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!Sprint!208.0.145.5!news.icubed.com!scramble.lm.com!myke Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:41973 >: OK, I *should* probably buy a new printer. :-) But just wondering if >: it's possible to get this old non-Postscript Epson dot-matrix printer to >: do graphics. >The bad news: I don't remember if the ghostscript binary package in >the ports collection has epson support compiled in by default. > >The good news: it's not hard to compile gs with epson support yourself. I've got an Epson FX-80 doing print service for my two machines right now, and it works pretty well. The ghostscript binary in the ports collection does not have the 'epson' device compiled in, however, so you will have to build it yourself from the ports collection. This is fairly straightforward, however ghostscript depends on several other packages and will take some time to build. Be sure to examine the Epson examples in the gs man page. You can change the resolution with the right flags, and will probably want to play with this as the default resolution is fairly low. By using netatalk I was able to make this printer appear as a network Postscript printer to Macintoshes, and it worked fairly well. Not bad for a 10 year old printer. - Mike