Spectre GCR Manual Manuals - Atari Documentation Archive

o Printers and Spectre
+ Certain programs, such as Microsoft Word, totally ignore the
Chooser, and use whatever file is called "ImageWriter" as the
printer driver. Thus, it's a darned good idea to copy whatever
printer driver you're going to use to the System Folder, and
name it ImageWriter (note the capital W), to avoid problems
like this. Of course, the original ImageWriter file will have to
go. (i.e., change it's name to something else like OldImage or
something)
Atari's SLM804 Laser Printer
Atari makes a pretty neat Laser Printer, called the SLM804. It fea­
tures a very classy "printer engine", which makes very good dots, and
very little on-board brains - at a very low cost.
Many Laser Printers have their own processor and memory. For
instance, an Apple LaserWriter II NTX has a 68020, a more powerful
processor than the Mac Plus! Problem is, the only time this memory
and processor get used is during printing.
Atari went for a more sensible approach. They use the Atari's
68000 and memory to support the Laser, and they're used when laser
printing; otherwise, they're available to the user.
We currently offer three levels of Atari SLM804 Laser Printer
support. In order of complexity, they are:
+ Screen dump support
+ QuickDraw printing support
+ PostScript printing support
Screen Dumps: Screen dumps are two step procedures. First, you
must enable the SLM804 option at the Spectre Menu page; the option
requires at least 2 megabytes of memory to even be available. This will
remove 1 megabyte of free space and assign it to the Atari Laser
Printer.
Next, anytime after starting up Spectre (it is best to wait until disk
drives are off), press Shift-Keypad-O. The screen will tum inverted as
the screen data is processed, and the image is built up for the printer.
Next, the screen will be inverted back to normal, and the image will be
dumped to the Laser Printer. It takes just a few seconds.
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