Re: [NTLK] recommendations on good serial to USB cable

I will throw a wrench in the works and offer a solution or two that I
know will work.

First you will not be able to print directly to the epson printer with
your emates. I have Epson Stylus 600 (same vintage as the emate) with a
mac serial port on it and I can not get it to print. I can get it to
send the document to the printer and some really nice garbage will come
out, but not what I sent. As far as I know epson only made a few newton
compatible drivers for much older printers.

Here is what you can do to get things to print on that printer. Hook it
to a mac and use classroom exchange to send the documents to the mac and
then to the printer. That would probably be the simplest way. That
being said, Epson printers in particular and all ink jet printers in
general cost a lot to run and maintain with regard to ink. Epson makes
printers with very fine nozzles for the ink to come out. The prints are
very sharp but the nozzles clog very easy. Then you have to go through
many clean cycles and the nozzles may not actually get clean and each
clean cycle uses ink. Plus the inks are expensive if you do a cost per
page analysis.

Here is a solution that will get you finer prints, will let you print
directly from your newton and you will not go broke doing it. Find a
older cheep Apple LaserWriter. I have a 4/600 (slow as molasses but
good prints) that only has a LocalTalk interface (serial). You can plug
your newton directly in to it and select AppleTalk (on your emate) as
the print method. It will search for a second and then you will see the
printer as your only choice, select it and you are good to go.

Hope this helps.

Susan Sedro wrote:
> My class was given an Epson printer. We had been trying to find an IR
> printer so that we could beam our projects to the printer from the eMates,
> since my students thought that sounded incredibly cool. However, we are not
> about to waste a free printer.
> It connects via USB. We'd like to use it to print from our eMates. Can
> anyone recommend a serial to USB cable that works with the eMates? Should I
> expect that all such cables will work with the Epson?
> Thanks for any knowledge you can share.
> Susan Sedro
> grade 5 teacher
> Minnesota, USA
>
>

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