So I accidently purchased a IIGs and can't get a printer work.

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NovellNetware's picture
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So I accidently purchased a IIGs and can't get a printer work.

So I have a Epson fx-890 with a Parallel port. I have a Quadram Phaser Serial to Prallel buffer box. I tested it with my PC and it works great. Not bad for a convert from 1983 or whatever date was on it. Now I hook my iigs up to it. using null modem, non null modem. Etc, etc. even found ou the baud out needs to be 9600. But no matter what port I use. The Printer or modem port. I get nothing or a very small, small amount of garbage. The cable that came with it was used for a modem and works great with ADT-PRo. I have some other cables that all seems to work great with ADT-Pro.

So I'm confused. I can't tell if I need a specail printer cable and not a modem cable for the IIgs or not. I did find on the Imagwritter 1 that a special? cable is needed. In fact

trying to connect those printers to a pc is crazy. I can see why Apple people purchsaed apple printers. I have a few macintoshs and mac printers. That was way easy to setup. Even localtalk? though ethernet was

great for laser pritners.  I also had the bright idea of looking up epson printers from that time frame to see if any special cable was needed. All I found was you need to purchase the serial card for the printer. I preffer not to do that. If anything I was looking at a applied engineering printer card for the iigs. It is about the same price and would let me use all of my printers. Well my 2 dot matrix and 2 laser printers.

Any help on what cable I need?

 

 

Thanks,

 

Josh

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I have old parallel printer

I have old parallel printer cards from earlier Apple II's laying around in droves. I never have a use for them. I personally would love a localtalk option card for my ImageWriter II, but I'm not in a rush to pay eBay price. 

 

Anyway if [you read that] the printer needs a serial card to work with a IIgs or Mac, I don't think you're going to get proper data over the parallel port, but I'm not an expert. You could humor yourself and try a null modem adapter to swap the serial pins on the cable, just in case. If that doesn't work you may need a parallel interface which may be cheaper than a serial card for your printer, I am not sure. If you do end up needing a parllel interface, you can always put the printer slot on 'your card' to use it when you need it over the built in printer port. 

 

 

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Printer and modem cables aren

Printer and modem cables aren't usually wired the same.  You may want to try a different cable...  Perhaps check here:

 

https://iec.net/product-tag/apple-md08-peripheral-cables/

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I think the easiest thing to

I think the easiest thing to do (and you have a good printer) is to get a cheap Parallel printer card, stick it in slot 1 and be done with that drama.

The Apple Parallel card and its clones work nicely, and there is also very wide compatibility for the various Orange Micro Grappler printer cards (and their clones).

 

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baldrick wrote:I think the
baldrick wrote:

I think the easiest thing to do (and you have a good printer) is to get a cheap Parallel printer card, stick it in slot 1 and be done with that drama.

The Apple Parallel card and its clones work nicely, and there is also very wide compatibility for the various Orange Micro Grappler printer cards (and their clones).

 

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing...  There are dozens of parallel cards that would would, in addition to the ones you mentioned like the Tymac Tackler, Epson APL, etc...  Often found for $20 or sometimes even less on eBay.  Often include the Centronics cable that usually plugs right into an Epson style printer.

 

 

 

 

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Besides not checking for bad typing and spelling.

I forgot to explain I got have a Grappler + card but I found a faq  about that type of card and the IIGS. It talked about a logic chip to check for. This

would tell you if you had the new or old card. The old card would have issues in the IIGS. Even the newer card might not work 100%. Though

they didn't go into detail about even if you have the newer card what to expect. I'm not surprised they had serveral revisions of roms and stuff.

They was trying to sell the Grappler Pro Plus card mfg for IIE and mostly the IIGS.

Looking around at other cards. You got to be carefull about that. I found a nice Applied Engineering card that was mfg around 91

for all apples including the IIGS.

I did see the epson card bus since I have other printers. I need to get one that support mutiple printers.

 

Thanks for the help. It sortof make sense that I need a different cable for printers.

 

Josh

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NovellNetware wrote:I forgot
NovellNetware wrote:

I forgot to explain I got have a Grappler + card but I found a faq  about that type of card and the IIGS. It talked about a logic chip to check for. This

would tell you if you had the new or old card. The old card would have issues in the IIGS. Even the newer card might not work 100%. Though

they didn't go into detail about even if you have the newer card what to expect. I'm no

 

The EPSON APL card will work with just about any parallel printer.  It's just a simple card.  The ones that are printer specific are the ones like the Grappler that have ROM code for graphics.  Even those will usually work fine with other printers just for text.  And can even print graphics usually if you use a separate graphics program.

 

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I didn't know that.

Not that I know why it wasn't more up front. This printer has an expansion slot on it. Everything listed a serial card and a network card. While hunting around. I found a few other cards that looked like they would fit. Sometimes they talked about in the 2190 (the wide carrage version.) The owners manual didn't talk about even the serial option. I found a service manual that listed all the cards for both printers and numbers. They offered a localtalk card. I found one on ebay and posted a bid on it. I didn't want to spend to much money on it. Sice it mostly talked about using it with a Macintosh. But I don't see why it wouldn't work with the IIGS. I'm a tad worried about older programs. Though for additional reading. The printer port emulates the apple serial port that most programs use. If I get the card. I'll keep you guys updated on what it does and does not work with.

 

Thanks,

Josh

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Update. Just ordered a card.

I found a Grappler + version 4.0 rom with disk. AKA later version of Grappler card for iie & iigs.

 

Thanks,

 

Josh

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