[rescue] SparcPrinter 1 resurrection

[john]

Dan Sikorski makes a good point, this list is not for someone just
looking for a laser printer.

At the same time, my setup has evolved over the many years I've owned
and run it.B  Except for the substitution of a SPARC 10 for the IPX it
had run on until 2003, and the installation of a much modified
Ghostscript 6.01, and the patches, it's an old installation.

I don't know if I would have been up to getting this thing running if I
hadn't already had it and known how to do it.B  And it did take days of
fussing to get the first Ghostscript 5.95 IIRC to work on it.

image drums and toner are still available, although I did buy out one
source of the toner cartridges he had.

I didn't mention it, but you do need the cd with the driver for the
s-bus card. I think I can duplicate mine.B  I can also share all of my
ghostscript 6.01 modified source. Mine works with SunOS 4.1.4.

As to the QIC tapes, it is the tapes which are dead, these tapes used a
continuous loop of "rubber" to move the tape back and forth past the
head.B  I doubt if any of those tapes is still usable, and it appears you
cannot buy new belts and although there is a service which claims to be
able to retrieve them, I haven't tried it.

As to whether resurrecting a SPARC printer 1 is a folly, it depends.B  I
needed the SPARC10 to run an application which won't easily run on
anything newer so since I had it and the printer it made sense to turn
it into a print server for the rest of our systems.B  I was able to set
up cups on the linux machines with a somewhat modified PPD file, same
with Spouse's Mac Air, but not the machines running Windows 10. It does
look possible on the Windows 10 systems, but I don't have the time to
sort it out.

If I were you, before I worried anymore about it, I would plug it in,
see if it lights up.B  i think it has no self test routine which will
print anything without connection to a Sun. if it does light up, you'll
get an error code. And if it does, it may be worth the trouble to
continue. the S-Bus cards and cables are available.

let us know how this goes?

john