Printing and Scanning on the OS/2 Platform by Tony Butka

First, a sorta mea culpa. I mentioned last time that the cheap Lexmark 210 was a postscript printer, and it isn't. Well, heck, I don't have one yet so I didn't know. A little research shows that it is a 4Mb 12 pages per minute laserjet. I'm not sure which print engine it uses, but I do know that folks have them running under OS/2 -- I just can't find the note I made as to which driver it uses.

Anyhow, this is a good opportunity to let you know how to find drivers for your trusty Lexmark, since a few folks have been saying bad things about the Lexmark site and finding drivers. Here's the links to go get them:

For the Lexmark Z51:

http://www.os2ezine.com/20010216/z51.html

For Lexmark Laserprinters:

ftp://ftp.lexmark.com/driver/laser_os2/

And for the Lexmark InkJet's:

ftp://ftp.lexmark.com/driver/inkjet_drivers/

As to where to get these lasers, and just how inexpensive they are, a couple of people recently got them at Office Depot for $99. Mail order, a search last week showed them for $149 at LA Computer Center and Compu-America. Both these companies are on the web at the usual www.sitename.com's.

Staying with the print driver theme for a moment, and going international, let me give you some links for Epson drivers.

• If you don't mind downloading a Japanese distribution (hey, you can figure out enough to use the driver, right?), IBM Japan (ftp://jp.ibm.com) has a newer driver than the device driver pak. The readme shows that it supports the:
  • EPSON PM-780C
  • EPSON PM-880C
  • EPSON PM-3500C
  • EPSON PM-900C

  This is the driver that I mentioned last month being used to work with the Epson Photo 820 printer by the VOICE folks who were conducting a survery.

  Also, Kalus Staedtler posted a tip on the 'net for using this driver. (If you try it, let me know how it works.)

  If you install the epomni4 parallel to the epomni3 (pointing to the same lpt port) you can use the builtin utilities. You can also upgrade some dlls by downloading the epomni5 (which is a japanese driver).

• And our good Epson friends in Germany have some OS/2 drivers at http://www.epson.de/support/download/index_drivers.htm

  As it says at the site "Hier finden Sie Druckertreiber der EPSON Deutschland GmbH (deutsch und englisch) (4599 kB) f�r OS/2 f�r folgende EPSON Drucker (Entwicklung eingestellt).". You got that, right? Anyhow, the drivers include

  • EPSON STYLUS COLOR 670 / 680 / 685 / 880 / 980
  • EPSON STYLUS COLOR 600 / 760 / 860 / 1160
  • EPSON STYLUS PHOTO 870 / 1270
  • EPSON STYLUS COLOR 600 / 800 / 850 / 1520 / 3000
  • EPSON STYLUS PHOTO / EX / 700
  • EPSON STYLUS COLOR 640 / 740 / 900
  • EPSON STYLUS PHOTO 750.

  Just follow the links at the site.

Were I you, fearless readers, I would go to these sites and get the drivers as we speak. This is because a number of printer manufacturers seem to be changing their web sites all the time making it hard if not impossible to actually find the bloody drivers that they have for all those 'other' operating systems like OS/2, Linux, Mac and such.

If you are a SCOUG member, of course you don't have to do all this downloading and finding of stuff because I will make all of the drivers available on the SCOUG CD. If you are one of our 'at large' (doesn't live in Southern California) members you still don't have to worry. We know that it is not possible for everyone to live in sunny Calfornia. I'm sure that we can prevail upon our CD of the Month person to make a few extras to send off to you, and I'll work out the details by next month.

Changing subjects, thanks to Peter Skye for the following: there's a brand new Yahoo! Group for Optical Character Recognition (OCR) on OS/2: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/OS2-OCR/

Oops, out of time again. Any ideas, comments or tips that you would like to share with others, drop me a line at Tony@SCOUG.com.

By day, Tony Butka is a bureaucrat for Los Angeles County. In his other life he lives in a loft surrounded by computers, printers, and a host of vinyl records.

Copyright 2002 the Southern California OS/2 User Group. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

SCOUG, Warp Expo West, and Warpfest are trademarks of the Southern California OS/2 User Group. OS/2, Workplace Shell, and IBM are registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation. All other trademarks remain the property of their respective owners.