OS4 Printing Guide

This is my guide to get printing working on the amigaone under OS4 and update2. I can only state what is required on my system, but this should be the same or similar on yours, and also the same for the applications that I have tested.
My system:- A1-G3-XE 800mhz with - Radeon 7000, SoundblasterLive, 80Gb H/Drive, 512Mb ram, DVD ROM, & CDRewriter. Epson Stylus Colour640 printer Epson EPL-5800 Laser printer

Applications tested:- 1. Turboprint

2. 3. 4. 5. Print Manager v39 Wordworth 7 FinalWriter 97 Pagestream 4.1

6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Turbocalc 5 Photogenics AmiPDF & AmiGS Directory Opus Graphics Publisher

11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

Multiview Notepad FXpaint ImageFX DrawStudio 2

The Following tweeks are to get printing to work:

Checked that par port address in uboot is set to 0x378. Checked that parallel.device is the latest version (50.4). Checked that printer.device is version 44.39 (Copy from the OS3.9). Copied PRT and PAR from Storage/DosDrivers to Devs/DOSDrivers. Copied across required printer drivers from the OS3.9 disk. Changed par port mode setting in uboot to EPP. Changed Turboprefs to use parallel.device instead Turbopar. Changed a1parallel.device entry to parallel.device in PAR mountlist. Changed use custom device in printer.prefs to DEVS:parallel.device. Installed Turboprint from A1200 partition. Installed Epson Stylus printer driver from Epson_Color.lha (Aminet). Installed PrintManager39 spooler from Aminet. Removed Turbospool from WBStartup (Turboprint install). Added TurboStart to WBStartup. Added NoTurbo to Amidock. Added PrintManager to Amidock. Added TurboPrefs to Amidock. Added Printer Prefs to Amidock. Added sys:tools/InitPrinter to userstartup file. So that I dont have to print from notepad to initialise the printer.

TurboPrint:

Turboprint print output is second to none, and although some people are perfectly happy with the workbench drivers, I think Turboprint quality is second to none. Just install turboprint from your A1200, it comes on floppies so a direct install is not possible, but I moved my A1200 hard drive over to my A1 and copied it to its own partition. Then I can copy across as, and when I need to. This gives you access to all of Turboprints printer drivers, the more upto date version you are using the more upto date the printer drivers are. Essentially the main program has stayed the same, but the amount, and type, of printer drivers has been added to with each update. Turbospool doesnt work under OS4, because it tries to access the hardware parallel port directly, and this works diferently on the A1. When installing Turboprint, remove Turbospool from the WBStartup drawer.

PrintManager: PrintManager39 is a prnter spooler, and under OS3.9 on my A1200 I used

Turbospool, which doesnt work under OS4. I have two printers on my system, one is an Epson EPL-5800 Lase printer, with 16mb ram, and the other is an Epson Stylus Color 640 inkjet. On OS4 only the Epson stylus requires the use of a spooler, so I have installed PrintManager, an OS4 compiled version is available on OS4Depot (Utilities/prtman.lha). The printing speed increase (over A1200) is such that on the laser printer the program prints faster than the printer, and the spooler is only required on the inkjet which is used to print pictures, photos and coloured docs. Wordworth blows out when trying to print, until you change the default setting under print setup to be Sheet feeder, by default it is set to Cut sheet. It is then possible to print text or graphics from Wordworth. Just a quick note about Wordworth there is a problem with trying to enter/change settings in the text boxes. It simply locks up/freezes the system, this has been posted on Amigaworld so hopefully the OS4 Dev team know about this. There doesnt seem any official place to post bug reports. Once I managed to get FinalWriter installed on my A1 it prints straight away, no problems at all. The installation is the only problem. I did a straight copy accross from my A1200, and was unable to run finalWriter at all, it kept hanging the system. The prefs have to be set so that FinalWriter asks at startup for the screenmode, once this is set I re-copied over from the A1200, and FinalWriter would then run OK. Once FinalWriter is on tha A1, you can reset the prefs to whatever you like. Under Printer Setup it is possible to select a printer type of preferences, and PageStream will use whatever you have set up in your preferences. PageStream also uses its own print driver system, which are printer type specific and not necessarily printer specific. My Epson EPL-5800 is driven by the HPLaserjet6L printer driver because the HP drivers are the only Laserprrinter drivers, but the Epson Stylus 640 is driven by the Epson Color 600 driver. You need to select the type of printer driver (Fargo/Epson/Hewlett Packard/Postscript) and then select send to PAR: There is a wide range of printer drivers available from within PageStream, many more than the Workbench drivers.

Wordworth:

FinalWriter:

PageStream:

TurboCalc:

TurbCalc has a problem/conflict with undefined variables under OS4. It is possible to define a variable, or macro, and then delete the actual location the variable. This leaves the variable name defined but pointing nownere. On OS3.9 TurboCalc ignored this and just carried on, under OS4 it gets a visit from the Grim Reaper. Once you know this is a problem it is just a case of making sure that you delete the variable name, under Macro/define name, when you delete a macro or a location used by a variable. How does this affect printing. Well it is possible to select an area of the spreadsheet as set it as the current printrange using the Settings menu. Text will print out OK but a graphic print just blows the system (Grim Reaper). The settings/printrange menu option sets up a variable called PRINTRANGE with the reference to the area selected. It is then also possible, using the same settings menu, to set the printrange to automatic which means the whole spreadsheet is printed out. To do this TurboCalc sets the variable PRINTRANGE to nothing, i.e. creating an undefined variable. On OS3.9 TurboCalc just carries on as normal but on OS4 this gets a visit from the Grim Reaper. The soloution is to delete the PRINTRANGE variable and then everything will print as normal. Photogenics has printer drivers (NGIO) for Studioprint and Turboprint, but selecting either has various problems. Selecting Turboprint gives a visit from the grim reaper, I have emailed Paul Nolan, and he stated that an updated printer driver was not possible. With Studio, it comes on floppies so is dificult to install on the A1. I installed it on my A1200 and copied the resulting files accross to the A1, but got the Grim reaper. Essentially this means that there is no direct printing from Photogennics, but you can save your pictures and print from other applications. There are three different options for hard copy printing from these two programs with varying results. Workbench drivers, turboprint drivers, or printer specific drivers, all of which are selectable from the print menu. Printing from AmiPDF, and AmiGS does not work with Turbprint running on workbench. The Turboprint device in Ghostscript8.1 is broken and does not work. If Turboprint is running both AmiPDF, and AmiGS try to use the Ghostscript turbprint.device. So to print with the workbench preference printer, you need to uninstall turboprint before trying to print from either of these programs, and print with the native Amiga printer drivers (from OS3,9). [This is why I installed NoTurbo and Turboprefs to Amidock, one click on NoTurbo and Turboprint is stopped from running, and then select Turboprefs and use, to get it running again.] For the same reason the Turboprint options obviously dont work either. Under update 2, and I dont jknow if this is me or the update, I cannot print using the workbench printers option. The third option works well under update2, and I cant say I tested it under update1, as I was able happy to print using the workbench printer option. Select the printer driver for your type of printer, and not necessarily the specific printer. ie. I use HPlaserjet4 driver on my Epson EPL-5800 laser printer, and there is a specific driver for my Epson Stylus Color 640. If you know that your printer has some form of emulation installed, such as either HP or Epson. There are also options to print to various file formats such as pdf, ps, eps, jpeg, and png, but I have not tested them as this is about hard copy printing.

Photogenics:

AmiPDF &AmiGS:

Directory Opus: This is version 4 off of the OS4pre CD, and this just prints perfectly OK.
This is part of the Turboprint package, and is useful for knocking up quick Graphics Publisher: pages with photos, and text. Such as notices, flyers, or adverts, and as you will be running Turboprint, this prints perfectly, at 24bit quality. It seems to be picky with some jpeg files, but loading and saving them through ImageFX seems to solve any problems. This is part off OS4, and just prints straight away. This is part off OS4, and just prints straight away. This printed straight away, and all settings seem to work correctly. Once this is installed correctly, what a pain as it overwrites some OS4 classes, and trashes AmiDock, check that Superprefs is selected as the print module , and ImageFX prints perfectly. Again once this is installed correctly, it prints perfectly OK. This program will use dr2d and eps vector graphic files as well as bitmaps and text, very useful for presentations, or advertising documents. It will also export as ps, or eps files including the bitmaps. I was realy surprised when I inadvertenty opened a dr2d file and was able export as an eps file. As metview doesnt work correctly on OS4 this is one way convert vector files.

Multiview: Notepad: FXpaint: ImageFX:

Drawstudio2:

Network Printing:
I do not have a network set up yet, but it is possible to print to a networked printer. The following are from postings on Amigaworld.net: Software wise NetPar and NetParlpr provide network access, and Printer device wise there is lpr-dev by Olaf Barthel which are all downloadable from Aminet. If it is not an ethernet enabled printer you will need a USB print server that allows you to use any USB printer as a network printer. Thanks to Chris_Y and Sandpiper for their comments on Amigaworld.net. It is also possible to print to a non-networked printer, via AmigaSamba, and SieGel, has posted some very long threads on Amigaworld.net helping people out. For further information on Network printing on the A1, do a search on Amigaworld, for lpr-dev, netpar, netparlpr, and AmigaSamba. I would reiterate these comments and soloutions on Network printing are not my own, but include them only for completeness.