Looking for new printer with old HPGL compatibility

[Jonathan Berry]

At 20 years of age, my old HP LaserJet Series II printer is about
ready for the scrap / recycling heap. I purchased a "new" drum kit,
but it rapidly deteriorated so that the print quality is worse than
the 15-year old heavily used Original Equipment. Despite cleaning the
rubber rollers, paper takeup is so bad that I can reliably load only
one page at a time.

So I'm looking for a new printer. I have Ventura Publisher 3 (i.e.,
non-Windows) documents that I want to continue to be able to print.
So I need HPGL or PCL compatibility. But, some of these pages would
print properly in a LJ ii, but would not print properly in a LJ iii.
So I need a printer which is truly compatible with a LJ ii, firmware-
wise.

It doesn't even need to be a Hewlett-Packard. Circa 1995, I was
shocked that a Brother inkjet printer produced the same Ventura pages
perfectly, no drivers or switches or special utilities required of the
Brother. I did not at that time test the problem pages that wouldn't
work on an LJ iii.

Suggestions? Thanks!

 

[Joel Kolstad]

In case you don't find a printer that you like... there are plenty of HPGL
converters available these days.

I had the same experience you seem to have back in the mid-'90s -- LaserJet
IVs were almost, but not quite, HPGL compatible. Grrrr!!! (This is perhaps
not entirely their own fault, since there were many versions of HPGL, yet it's
uncommon for anyone to tell you what version their HPGL file *uses*... we once
had an old HP 7470 plotter that, over time, became useless as everyone was
preparing HPGL files for the newer 7475 that had lots of new and useful
commands...)

 

[Bob AZ]

On Jun 17, 7:14?am,

Suggestions? Thanks!

--

Jonathan Berry

Get some LJIIIs.Or LJIIID. All the parts are available. For your
particular problem you probably need a new pickup roller.

While your are at it get two or more. They will last the rest of your
life.
And see

"fixyourownprinter.com" for lots of help.

Bob AZ

 

[Bob Headrick]

So I'm looking for a new printer. I have Ventura Publisher 3 (i.e.,
non-Windows) documents that I want to continue to be able to print.
So I need HPGL or PCL compatibility. But, some of these pages would
print properly in a LJ ii, but would not print properly in a LJ iii.
So I need a printer which is truly compatible with a LJ ii, firmware-
wise.

The LaserJet II was a PCL printer, it did not understand HP/GL. Later
models could understand PCL or HP/GL-2 in some cases. The LaserJet III was
a superset of the PCL available in the LaserJet II, at least for the
documented commands. Most of HP's inkjet printers understand PCL (with some
exceptions - DeskJet 820, 7xx, 34xx). There are also PCL readers, you
might try a Google search for a freeware version. Then you could load the
problem pages and see if you can determine what the issue is.

Regards,
Bob Headrick, MS MVP Printing/Imaging

 

[Warren Block]

So I'm looking for a new printer. I have Ventura Publisher 3 (i.e.,
non-Windows) documents that I want to continue to be able to print.
So I need HPGL or PCL compatibility. But, some of these pages would
print properly in a LJ ii, but would not print properly in a LJ iii.
So I need a printer which is truly compatible with a LJ ii, firmware-
wise.

Try GhostPCL:

http://www.artifex.com/downloads/

It says it supports PCL5E and HPGL/2 with RTL, whatever that is.

If your documents are static, I'd suggest rendering them to either
PostScript or PDF to remove the PCL version dependency.