This is an offical announcement of the retirement of the NEC spinwriter (aka
LQ0, aka TTQ3) and the Diablo 630 (aka IT, aka TTR3). YEA!!

The replacements are QMS PS410 postscript laser printers. They are connected
to Appletalk and can take files from the Vax and the Mac's simultaneously.
These printers are fairly smart. They try to sense whether the data to be
printed is postscript or HP LaserJet II so they can do the correct emulation.
The problem is, many of the files that we normally print look an awful lot
like postscript (lots of #'s, /'s, { and }'s and %'s). I thought I could get
away with not having you have to specify whether the file you are printing is
a postscript file or just a plain text file but I can't.

Soooo, the print symbiont assumes you are printing a plain text file (or
something with embedded HP escape sequences) and inserts a non intrusive HP
escape sequence in front of your file so the printer immediately switches to HP
mode and won't get confused with postscript like text that may appear in your
file.

To print an actual postscript file, you need to specify a parameter on the
print command. This parameter tells the symbiont not to stick in the HP
command in front of your file. At this time, the parameter need only be non
blank (the symbiont doesn't care what the parameter is, only whether it's
there or not). You might want to assign a word for printing regular text
and printing postscript text:

	$ PRLQ :== print/que=lq0
	$ PRPS :== print/que=lq0/param=post_script

The printers each hold about 250 sheets of paper in the "optional tray" which is
underneath the printer. If it runs out of paper, an orange led on the control
panel labeled "paper out" will light. Check to see that the "optional tray" led
is lit (someone may have selected the "standard tray" via a printer command
which, on LQ0, is not normally loaded with paper). To add paper to the optional
tray, open it by pulling the drawer open (and out) to the left. Fill it as you
would a Xerox machine adding paper only to the fill line and reinsert the
drawer. To add paper to the "standard tray", just insert from 1 to about 50
sheets into the upper slot through the paper guides.

ds