TurboPrint 7.60 on the PegasosII

Hello morphers!

I recently purchased an Epson C84 printer. This was a risk for two reasons:
(1) because the necessary drivers are contained in the TurboPrint 7.60 package, and nothing assured me that they would work on the PegasosII in the MorphOS environment; and
(2) because printing on the PegasosII and MorphOS is known to be a rather difficult task.

However I tried and now can say that everything worked fine! I report here the details of the installation and setting procedure that worked for me, hoping that they will be useful for somebody.

The package of TurboPrint 7.60 (from now on: TP_760) is formed by the manual and two floppy disks. This is my second manual because I already purchased TurboPrint 7.10 a few years ago. Copy protection on the floppy disk of version 7.10 was implemented by writing some data somewhere on the original floppy during or after the installation process. So I was almost certain that the best procedure for me would be to do the installation of TP_760 on my Amiga 4000, and then transfering the relevant files onto the PegasosII. But I was in a hurry and tried first another more direct strategy. I simply copied the archives turboprint7.lzx and turboprint7hd.lzx, and the TurboPrefs file from the original floppy disk to the Amiga 4000, and then from this computer to the Pegasos. Here I extracted the archive contents and made a binary comparison with all the files present in the MorphOS version of TurboPrint (from now on: TP_MOS). I deleted all the files of TP_760 that were already present and were absolutely equal to TP_MOS files, and remained only with the following TP_760 components:

(Well, there were also some residual icons, and the directories mwbicons and pictures that are irrelevant in the present context). In the second column of the table you see my classification of these files: updated version is a file that already exists in TP_MOS but has been updated to a new version in TP_760; new file is a file that does not exist in TP_MOS; old version is a file with the same binary content, but copyrighted as ZEDOnet in TP_MOS and as IrseeSoft in TP_760; not present in MOS is self-explicative.

In the third column you see the action I applied to each file: loaded files were inserted in TP_MOS, possibly overwriting the previously existing file; not loaded means that I preserved the already existing version (in particular, I already had wizard.library V42.100 in SYS:libs and did not take care of V38.136 present in TP_760); not needed marks files that can be ignored in the MorphOS environment. In particular TurboPrefs is not needed because its functionality is inserted in the "System settings/Printer" module of Ambient (except for the hardcopy module).

Users of the TurboPrint package on the Amiga know that copy protection is activated by the TurboPrefs program, that needs some user data and requires the original distribution disk before allowing TurboPrint to run. I had a surprise when I discovered that in the MorphOS environment TurboPrefs starts soon without problems, declaring that its serial number is 000000. Somebody, or maybe everybody, in the MorphOS team and at IrseeSoft love us very much, and we were not aware!

Once I recognized that the TurboPrint protection is disabled for morphers, I was almost sure that my manual upgrade of TP_MOS would work fine. But I should still pass another obstacle, since people often complains because the printing process in the MorphOS environment seems to be somewhat unfriendly. I must say that this was not true for me, because I succeeded at the first try. I think that I'm not neither much more expert nor more lucky than the others; so, maybe, the reason is in the particular compatibility of the hardware (I chose an Epson C84 printer) or in the fact that I always take great care to install any available OS upgrade.

So, here it is my configuration (only possibly relevant items are mentioned): PegasosII G4, 512 Mb RAM; MorphOS 1.4.2, plus the upgrades available on the beta2 FTP site at zargos.morphos.net (commodities.library, iffparse.library, parallel.device), plus the USB manager upgrade available here.

I connected my Epson C84 printer to the PegasosII by means of an USB cable, and noted that Poseidon immediately detected its presence. To see this I activated the "System settings/USB" module of Ambient and read the message window (set "Information level:" to "All messages", if you have not yet done it). As soon as you power on the printer, Poseidon reports something like this: "printer.class | Please welcome 'USB Printer' to the family at usbparallel.device unit 0!". Then I started the "System settings/Printer" module and set the following in the "Printer" folder: Name "Epson_StylusC84"; Port "Device"; Device "usbparallel.device 0". Then I set the following in the "Config" folder: Printmode "Colour"; Paper "A4". Many other items in this folder and in the others are already set by default and you can modify them as you wish in a subsequent phase, but be certain to activate the "16 Mio. Colours" option in the "Graphics" folder if you want high quality colour printing.

After that, I assumed to be ready and started to test. Wordworth, AmigaWriter and PageStream printed text and graphics without problems, while the GraphicsPublisher program of the TP_760 package allowed me to load and print many images in various formats, orientations, and positions on the sheet. For best graphics performance, of course, I had to set the "Density" value to 4 or 5 in the "System settings/Printer/Config" folder.

I made another experiment detaching the USB cable and connecting the parallel ports of the printer and the PegasosII (in such a case remember to set PAR: in "System settings/Printer/Port"): I observed no difference in results and performances.

I also had a number of failures (both via USB or parallel cables): up to now AWeb, Directory Opus Magellan, CEd, and AmigaTeX do not want to print... (but I'm writing this after very few tries, so this could change in the next future). Anyway, the main result of my explorations was that I was able to print soon with the most important applications.

And now, morphers, go! Buy TurboPrint 7.60, a new printer, and be happy!

(Please do not complain to me if they do not work... maybe I'm only very fortunate!)

DoctorMorbius_FP