Morning Folks:

We have an aging 2934A departmental dot matrix printer serially connected to
the HP via a DTC-48.  This dinosaur provides unlimited frustration for
everyone that uses it.  The darn thing jams every second job and we've tried
everything (short of paying for a hardware call) to correct this problem.

We've decided to retire it.  Most users want us to jettison it into the
harbour, but pollution control dictates otherwise.

HP no longer sells a comparable printer.  They suggested we upgrade to a
line printer that costs roughly $8000, but this printer is used rather
infrequently so I'm looking at a (much) lower cost solution.

My question du jour:  what is stopping me from replacing this printer with a
low cost 132 column dot matrix, for example, a Panasonic KXP3626 or
comparable?  I would like to retain the HP's status checking and error
recovery capabilities, but could do without, if necessary.  Has anyone
attached a serial PC printer to their DTC?  If so, what problems (or
successes)?  If not,  why not?  Are there any other issues I should know about?

OS:  MPE/iX 5.0,  PP 6

Any or all info greatly appreciated!



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Steve Patterson          ##             [log in to unmask]
Halifax Port Corporation ##  http://fox.nstn.ca/~mrkting/
                                           (902) 426-6569