HP Laserjet 1200 on USB

[ian j hart]

On Saturday 20 September 2003 2:36 pm, Kirk Strauser wrote:
> At 2003-09-20T12:40:02Z, ian j hart <ianjhart at ntlworld.com> writes:
> > 2)
> > What makes you think USB will be faster? The bottleneck is almost
> > certainly the print engine. esp. in graphics mode.
>
> It currently takes about 5 minutes to transfer a 20MB file to my printer
> which has 64MB of memory.

So you have extra RAM then.

> Printing starts within 5-10 seconds of the upload being completed.

Q. How much of the 5 mins is data transfer, and how much is "printer busy" 
(rendering)?
A. Nobody knows :)

Only when USB works will we know. We could test under Windows I suppose**

> If the parallel port is in interrupt mode, CPU is
> pegged to 100% the whole time.  In polled mode, CPU usage drops, but the
> printing time doesn't decrease (and the ``parallel'' process is running the
> whole time).  That's what made me think that the parallel port is probably
> the bottleneck.

Perhaps IEEE1284 support needs "tweaking".

What's your data? One 20Mb graphic is different to a 20Mb "text" document.

As a point of reference here is what we have.

Win95 clients with PS driver -> K6II500 servers running samba + cups -> stock 
1200's (ie. 8Mb)

A page of text takes about a minute, graphics about 3. MS Word will let you 
add a border made up of replicated images. A large graphic plus a border can 
take 20 mins+.

Now this could easily be the client software/driver, but public opinion seems 
to be that these printers are slow on graphics. **again

Just my 2c.

-- 
ian j hart

Quoth the raven, bite me!
	Salem Saberhagen (Episode LXXXI: The Phantom Menace)

**Personally I don't care. It's a "real" PS and text printer for ~£200. I work 
at a school, cost is a primary consideration.