Considering a Laserwriter...

[LC_575]

Although I love my LJ4L, I'm limited, as a classic mac user, by the fact that I haven't got an Apple printer. Only my iMac has actual printing via DAVE; everything else is PrintPDF and sneakernet.

I've considered a Personal LW NTR, which has both LocalTalk and parallel ports (which would allow it to work with my Windows machine), but it's bulky and it would mean a new cartridge form factor. Now I'm looking at the Laserwiter 4/600, a.k.a the Personal LW 3x0. Furthermore, one of the lovely benefits of the LJ4L is that it's low enough to be stowed beneath my bed, along with my Performa. I dont want to give up this feature.

To the best of my knowledge the LJ4L and PLW/LW 4|600/3x0 models are very closely related to the LJ4L, but how close is it? Can they use the same carts, perhaps even exchange parts? Or is it just pure coincidence that they sounds identical when printing? Also, is the 4|600/3x0 just LocalTalk, or is there a parallel port in there too?

 

[beachycove]

Same cartridges, probably same print engine, so swappable parts highly likely. Networking is localtalk only, but they can be converted to ethertalk by means of an adapter, or printed to as standard appletalk printers by means of LaserWriter Bridge from anything up to X.5. For Windows usage you're on your own; probably far from convenient or easy to do.

Models like the LW 4/600 are indeed small enough to fit under a bed. A better bet, however, would be something like a LW 16/600, which is a good deal larger (top of the bed would work!) and noisier than the 4/600 but also much faster and more powerful, and which may still have a lot of life left in it, as it can be configured for IP printing rather than Appletalk. Toner is cheap and ubiquitous. It also has localtalk, ethernet (via AAUI adapter) and Parallel ports, all of which can be active at the same time. RAM readily expanded via standard 72-pin SIMMs.

A 4/600 is also more or less useless for anything graphics-intensive (incl. most PDFs) today without an über-rare RAM upgrade card. Don't ever buy one unless it has 6MB of RAM already installed in it. I think these were specific to this machine only, and are not found in the HP you have.

Now, having said that, the 4/600 is my favourite printer for most uses: quiet, energy-savvy, crisp 600DPI output, cheap to run, and perfectly matches my favourite beige machine, the 8600. — Mine has the RAM card, as otherwise the constant Postscript errors would cause me to consign it to a shelf rather than use it more or less daily.

 

[Strimkind]

I have owned quite a few Laserwriters. A few Personal LW, a 16/600, and a LW Select 360. They were all in various conditions.

All Personal LW I have had are not functional. I do have 2 untested so that may change

The LW Select 360 are great and it kept me going right through university...even though the Fuser was not working properly (ink peeled off).

The LW 16/600 was great but toner was expensive.

I'd try for a later model LW if you can find one. They have more connection options. The LW Select, 16/600, or even an 8500 if you can find one

 

[Bunsen]

Can they use the same carts

Ask a toner supplier.

 

[trag]

I'm not sure if they're too tall for your needs, but the LaserJet 4M and the 4M Plus were workhorses in their day and they use standard 72 pin SIMMs for memory expansion.

I have a nice little LaserJet 2100NT which I'm very happy with. It comes standard with LocalTalk and has a PIO slot (or whatever HP was calling it at that time) for another network card, such as fast ethernet.

The fast ethernet card was well under $20 last time I looked. Of course, if you get a real 2100nt it already has the card. The 2100 nt is a 2100 with the Postscript SIMM (or is it a DIMM) and an ethernet card in the PIO slot.

However, laser printers are so cheap to buy new now days... The problem is you'll likely never find one with LocalTalk/AppleTalk support. You can overcome the lack of LocalTalk support with a LocalTalk/Ethernet bridge such as the AsanteTalk or the MicroAsantePrint, but if the printer doesn't speak AppleTalk it won't matter, unless you can get your old computer to output TCP/IP when it prints.

Two years ago I was shopping for a color laser printer. For some reason, that holiday season there were several (well, three) models for $200 - $300 shipped and each included postscript and ethernet built in. I think the $300 printer also had a duplexer included. I haven't seen deals that good on color laser printers since then. However, of the three (Xerox Phaser 6180, Brother mumble, Kyocera EcoPro 170N), only the Kyocera included AppleTalk as a supported communications protocol. The others would have required my old Macs to send their postscript in TCP/IP protocol. So I bought the Kyocera for $200 shipped. A steal.

Unfortunately, Kyocera seems to have discontinued their economical consumer/SOHO printer line. At least toner is still available, although I haven't needed any yet.