I've succesfully used an Imagewriter to echo the console, but I never
made a printcap for it.

Since it at least starts out correctly, perhaps an escape character is
getting through and telling it to switch into graphics mode. Does hard
setting it to draft mode, on the panel, make any difference? Draft
quality doesn't have a graphics mode.

It's likely, also, that the handshaking is wrong. The default setting
on the printer is sw2-3 open = hardware handshaking; sw2-3 closed =
software handshaking. I believe that a printcap with no other settings
will default to _software handshaking_. So you'll want to either
change the setting on the printer, or set up hardware handshaking in
the printcap. Changing the switch is probably good enough for a
text-only line printer. 

The hardware handshaking option would be more suitable if you intend
to play with the colors or graphics modes. Adding something like this
to your printcap should do.

:br#9600:xc#0177777:ms=-noparity,-opost:

On Sun, 8 Nov 1998, Dave wrote:

> I have an old Imagewriter II, but no instruction manual for it. So I am
> just taking stabs at trying to set it up as a line printer in
> /etc/printcap. I did figure out how many characters it prints on the page
> (length/width) in it's fastest dot matrix mode and I set it accordingly. I
> am using a Quadra 700.
> 
> So far, the best it will do is print a cover page and then get
> approximately a half page through any text file, start printing garbage
> characters, and then stop dead. Playing with the buffer option doesn't seem
> to help. Setting the baud to anything other than 9600 makes it print
> strange garbage. What am I missing?
> 
> Is anyone out there using an Imagewriter II and would like to share a
> working printcap config? I've been looking through the mailing list & faq
> to no avail.