With the advent of GS/OS for the Apple IIGS, printer communications follow a Macintosh-style architecture; both Macintosh OS and GS/OS printing are driver-based.
The print driver technique allows a wide variety of printers to be attached to the Apple IIGS -- once the driver is written. This allows Apple IIGS-specific applications to talk with the Print Manager. In turn, the Print Manager communicates with the Graphic Control Panel-selected print driver, which is installed in the Apple IIGS. Thus, the communication to printers relies on the availability of print drivers for the Apple IIGS, not on the specific application.
As shipped from Apple, GS/OS 5.0 provides direct connection drivers for the ImageWriter, ImageWriter LQ, and the Epson printers. For LocalTalk printers, LaserWriter, AppleTalk ImageWriter, and AppleTalk ImageWriter LPG drivers are included. Only the ImageWriter drivers provide color support; the Epson driver does not provide color capabilities.
Hewlett-Packard does not support the Apple IIGS-to-PaintJet (or other HP printers) connection. Apple Tech Comm does not know of any third-party Apple IIGS print drivers that allow the selection of the PaintJet from the GS/OS Graphic Control Panel.
Orange Micro markets a product called Grappler C/Mac/GS. This is a serial-to-parallel converter. The Grappler device also provides ImageWriter II emulation for Epson, Okidata, Panasonic, and other Epson-compatible parallel printers. The Grappler C/Mac/GS can print in color on parallel color printers. We have been unable to define which of the following printers are color; however, Orange Micro has provided this list of Grappler C/Mac/GS-compatible printers:
- Epson : EX, FX, JX, RX, LX series; and the MX series with Graftrax
- Star : SD, SR, SG series; and Gemini 10X, NX-10 (in Epson FX mode)
- Okidata : 190, 290 series
- C.Itoh : C310XPR (Epson FX mode), ProWriter Jr.
- Panasonic: 1080, 1090 series
- Citizen : MSP-10 (Epson FX mode)
- Printers fully compatible with any listed above.
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