Laserwriter Lisa?

[CelGen]

I currently do not have the ability to test here but has anyone ever tried connecting a LaserWriter/LaserWriter Plus to a Lisa and seeing if it would print both text and graphics properly? I'm not educated enough in Apple's method of controlling printers in the early days to remember if the LaserWriter could emulate an ImageWriter should the host machine not have the specific LaserWriter driver.

In my head while it would of been too little too late for the Lisa, it sounds like it would of been a bang-on competitor for a desktop publishing and office suite marketed by Xerox which cost tens of thousands of dollars more.

 

[CelGen]

After a bit of further research I answered my own question: Not natively.

The LaserWriter relies on PostScript being exported from the host computer. The Lisa predates Apple's implimentation of PostScript by a couple years. In theory one could port PostScript to LOS but it seems to have QuickDraw as a prerequisite which again the Lisa does not have but Macs had for the most part in ROM. The Lisa as-is has a pretty high overhead. Fitting a graphics application, PostScript exporter and the QuickDraw emulation into the 1mb RAM simply is not feasable unless I'm going at this the wrong way.

 

[NJRoadfan]

Apple DID write an ImageWriter emulator for LaserWriter printers. It is included with GS/OS and also AppleTalk client disks for the IIe. search for a file called IWEM. Its an uploadable Postscript application that converts ImageWriter ESC sequences to actual output on a page. It was created to allow 8-bit Apple II programs to print to a networked LaserWriter, but it should work with a Lisa as well. Connection would be direct RS-232 serial of course.