Trying for a duplex printer

[Scott Bennett]

     On Thu, 08 May 2008 11:56:25 -0400 Chuck Robey <chuckr at chuckr.org> wrote:
Gary Jennejohn wrote:
> On Wed, 07 May 2008 14:43:32 -0400
> Chuck Robey <chuckr at chuckr.org> wrote:
> 
> [snip Kyocera FS-1030D]
>> Thanks, Gary.  Took me quite a while to find this baby, because it seems that
>> Kyocera's main site doesn't acknowledge of the Kyocera-Mita's products.  I
>> finally found out that it's a fairly big  monochrome laser.  I rather like the
>> color I get from the cheaper inkjets, although I sure would rather get one with
>> a FreeBSD driver.  Further, from what I could find, I couldn't tell if it was a
>> postscript native printer, and I am dead-set against any postscript native
>> printers, because I used to have one, and when compared to any innkset that must
>> use a translator such as ghostscript, the postscript native printers are (or, at
>> least used to be) dead slow.  Maybe it took them too long to transfer big
>> postscript files, or maybe it took the internal processors too long to
>> translate, I dunno, but when I had one of the original old HP laserjets with a
>> postscript cartridge, and I converted to using ghostscript about a year after I
>> got it, I was shocked that my print rate went up about 4-5 times as fast.  I
>> could actually get the advertised print rates.
>>
> 
> Well, I have an ethernet card in it, so transfer times are not a problem.
> 
> This printer _emulates_ postscript quite well.  It actually supports other
> modes.  Here's a list from the Technical Reference manual:
> 
> The printing systems emulate the operation of seven other printers:
>   HP LaserJet (mode 6)
>   HP 7550A (mode 8)
>   IBM Proprinter X24E (mode 1)
>   Epson LQ-850 (mode 5)
>   Diablo 630 (mode 2)
>   Standard line printer (mode 0)
>   KPDL (mode 9) [PostScript compatible]
> 
     Here's another pair to add to the above list, though I don't know whether
you can still find it for sale:

    Panasonic KX-P7305 and KX-P7310 [HPGL (IIRC) and PostScript]

These two are essentially identical, except that the KX-P7310 has an ethernet
interface in addition to the USB 2.0 and parallel ports.  It prints somewhere
around 19 ppm in simplex mode, around 17 ppm in duplex, if memory serves me.
(I haven't used mine recently.)  It has a "toner saver" mode that changes black
to a grey matrix useful for stuff you want to read but don't care how nice it
looks.  Toner cartridges are supposed to be good for about 5,000 pages, but I
never got even 4,500 in toner saver mode, so I don't know what Panasonic
measured.  The PostScript interpreter normally does a nice job, but appears to
be incompatible with some applications (e.g., acroread).  The "native" mode is
HPGL or some such, which acroread seems to handle well enough.  One really
irritating thing I noticed quickly is that lpr(1) doesn't support duplex, so
printing stuff on it that would normally go through lpr(1) needed some other
method to get it duplexed.  I think I bought mine in late 2004 from
tigerdirect.com for U.S. $195 less a $70 mail-in rebate, giving a final price
of $125.


                                  Scott Bennett, Comm. ASMELG, CFIAG
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