Laser printers Amiga compatible. Suggestions please.
 

I would like to buy a new black & white laser printer for personal and not intensive use to be shared between A1200 and a notebook.
In the past I used an HP Laserjet 1100 with my A1200 only, but now its life is over.

On searching on the net I found an OKI B2400 since it has:

1- USB + PARALLEL port.
2- PCL5e, PCL6, IBM PPR, EPSON Fx languages supported.
3- very compact size. Great problem: I need width lower than 357 mm. No problem for height or depth.
4- price about/lower eur 200

I believe that the printers with IBM PPR and EPSON languages supported should work with our Amiga (please someone confirm me this).

It's the first time I find OKI brand. Do you have one, how does it work?
Does anyone have this OKI B2400 printer?
What would you suggest me? Thanks.

Any Postscript printer with parallel port is OK.

Don't know about the price of replacements for that specific printer. Old HP ones at least had cheap parts/replacements (toner cartridge and cylinder).

I found a Samsung ML-2570. It has USB + Parallel port and it has Postscript3 and PCL6 emulations. Is it ok with our A1200? What software driver I should set?

If it have PS, try to use an ancient "pure" PostScript driver (there is one on the extras disk from 3.0/.1 and on 3.5/.9 CD too).

Thanks. I'll look again for other printers, at the moment I would go for the Samsung ML-2570.

Mmm.... On reading on-line the available manual, I read that Samsung ML-2570 supports Postscript3 and PCL6 emulated languages after the installation of the supplied drivers in Windows. What does this mean? Does this printer work with A1200?
In the past I had an HP Laserjet 1100. It worked fine with Amiga and with its driver downloaded from Aminet, but I'm enough sure it worked with generic (or EpsonX) Amiga driver too.

What I would like to know is which specifications must have a printer to be sure that it is compatible with Amiga. :nuts Please help me. :bowdown

If it needs exotic drivers to work, forget about it.

Those drivers are also a sort of "emulation", so if you are stuck on Amiga, no drivers.

Questions again, please help me...

So a printer to be compatible Amiga must have EPSON or POSTSCRIPT support but NOT HOST BASED (emulated?), that is the printer must support them using its inside chips.
In the latter case, on using the Amiga printer driver EPSON X or POSTSCRIPT, the printer should work properly.
Please could someone confirm this?

And are there printer drivers in Amiga OS (and from which version) with suppurt to PCL5e, PCL6, IBM Proprinter?
And what's for the "generic" printer driver available in Amiga OS?

- epson x is an ancient dot matrix printer. forget it.
- postscript is good, many "office level" HP Laserjets support it in natively, home printers rarely do
- the generic driver can only output ASCII text

Does "natively" mean NOT HOST BASED?

Yes it does, Native meaning local, ie processed locally not by host.

TC :D

Just un update for this post that I forgot.

I can confirm that to be compatible with our Amiga a modern printer MUST:
- be NOT HOST BASED (therefore no WinPrinter or GDI, unfortunately 90%+ are so) and therefore have natively some printer language that you know Amiga supports (as Epson FX, IBM Pro Printer...)
- have a PARALLEL port for Amiga (usually NOT HOST BASED PRINTERS have it) and USB for PC if you want share it

My choice went to a new OKI B4400 for euro 125 shipping included.
About it I can say it has a B/W LED tecnology (similar to laser), professional target (support up to 30000 pages/month), solid and enough compact (h x w x d = mm 200x355x395), 32 MB RAM, 26 PagesPerMinute, tray for 250 sheets, 1x 3000 pages toner is included. Compatible toner from 38 euro.

Well, first I connected to my A1200 (parallel cable, epsonX driver set) and it works perfectly at very high speed (surely 20+ ppm). In the same time I can share the printer with a notebook connected obviously by USB cable. On the PC the software installed is able to change many advanced settings (not required). Amiga can use them immediately and with PC switched off.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Highly recommended !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

1. PS: On Amiga it worked, but not perfectly, with "generic" printer driver too!!!
2. PS: I liked Samsung printer. Unfortunately, although some support other printer languages, these printers seem all HOST BASED.
3. PS: I didn't know OKI, but after a request sent by e-mail I received a phone call after just 1 hour. Excellent support.

We have five HP Laserjet 1100 in our office. They run great with Amigas and Ghostscript so we are able to print invoices/packing slips/docs quickly. Consumables are very low cost as well.

Oh yes, as I said above I had the printer HP Laserjet 1100 for which a dedicated Amiga driver exists. It's an old and good printer I used for years. Unfortunately many of them suffer, with age, to take/drag more sheets with consequent problems. Finally it has not USB connection therefore you can't share this printer with PC (USB) and Amiga (Parallel).

Search for a Laserjet 6L. I had one on the 90's and used it on both the Amiga and PC at the same time. The problem is you could only have the usb or the parallel cable connected at the same time.

I used it only rarely on the Amiga, just to print text, but i remember it worked. I quite don't remember how i got it configured to work. I just remember something about ghostscript or postscript. Sorry for not being
much more helpful but more than 10 years have passed, last time i used it on Amiga. :)
Sold it to a friend in 2002 to get a color A3 color printer.



EDiT: Should have read the whole thread!:o

At home I have a notebook and inside a drawer of the same desk there is my lovely A1200 ready to go (already plugged to PSU, LG LCD Monitor/TV and obviously Mouse/Joy).
Like you, I will rerely use the printer with it and mainly to print text but, since I need a new one for my PC, why don't choose one to share with Amiga?
I went for the OKI B4400 that, incredibly, I found cheaper than its little brother (B2400). I'm very satisfied and I can suggest it to everyone! :)

I have a HP LaserJet 4ML, and it works fine. Avoid host based printers (also called Windows Printers here). They process the pages using the computer's CPU to make them cheaper with less electronics. Since there was no such thing* back then, they are unusable.

My advice would be to get a Postscript-supporting black & white laser printer that is common in small offices. The best buy would probably be an old but well-kept one, as you could get them for next to nothing and there would be no super modern Postscript version and / or skimping on full Postscript compatibility.

Choose a brand that made printers back when Amiga was used in small offices.

HP is a laser printer, while OKI is a led printer. OKI has lower power consumption and cheaper consumables. But I have an HP laser here that has been around since 1994 and still works perfectly. Whereas I've binned two OKI led printers from 1993 to now. :)

HP Laserjet 4ML is like the HP Laserjet 1100 I had. Both have the parallel port but don't have an USB port. To share the printer with PC / Amiga on the same desk you should plug/unplug the parallel cable. I don't like it and recent notebooks and many desktop PC unfortunately don't have the parallel port, but only USB (like many WinPrinters :guru ).

OKI B4400 is a modern NO HOST BASED printer with both ports at cheap price and high printing speed (26 PPM). Although it's designed for professional use (up to 30000 Pages/Months), I hope to have the luck it will live many many years in my low home use :bowdown. In the mean time I find satisfactory to use a modern printer with Amiga at over 20 pages/minute. :)

Another excellent source of compatible laser printer is looking for ethernet-capable (LAN) printers!

Just look for Postscript and LAN printers. ;)

OKI has this printers available:
OKI B4400, OKI B4400n, OKI B4600, OKI B4600n, OKI B4600PS, OKI B4600nPS.

Printers with "n" letter come with network card included. (No "n" printers can have it as addon).
Printers with "PS" letters come with PostScript included.
Obviously more options mean higher price. About me, my B4400 is already enough...