Hi Steve, Ok, for once I have a useful answer :) hehehe :) I have 2 Epson DFX-5000 serial printers attached to my 3k - series 957... basically use the term type that uses no status checking ... they work ok... well.. one of 'em died and I just turned it off (tho thots of sacrifices come to mind...) The biggest problem comes every once in a while (read about once every 200 or so print jobs) when the printers lose their buffer control and dump the print job as garbage... the next print job works fine. If you need to only do a low level of printing volume on a printer then these cheaper alternatives are worth exploring. Also, explore purchasing used 256x printers from a reseller...decent price and work very well with the HP 3k... the drawback is most of the 256x line is going off maintenance within a couple, three years :( Oh, and the wiring was simple for these puppies! 2, 3 & 7 if I remember right. Art Bahrs +-------------------------------------------+------------------------------+ | Oregon Health Sciences Foundation |The views here are no one's, | | Art Bahrs, Manager of Information Services| least of all, mine! | | President, HP Oregon Regional Users Group (ORERUG) | +-------------------------------------------+------------------------------+ | And the men who hold high places must be the ones to start. | +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | [log in to unmask] 'The Professor' Work: (503) 220-8333 Fax: (503) 228-9588 | +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ >>> Steve Patterson <[log in to unmask]> 12/11/96 07:27am >>> 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