Thank you to all who responded, including:
Calvyn Price, calvyn.price@csc-eng.demon.co.uk
Iseminger, SIseminger@atd.gmeds.com
Paul Margozzi, admin@MediaVis.com
Bill Reed, reedwv@expu79.stp.xfi.bp.com
Chris Bolan, cbolan@mercury.ccca.centcom.mil
Robert Gillespie, robert.gillespie@airgun.wg.waii.com
Stuart Little, Stuart.Little@ssu.stcssl.co.uk
Rick, rnf@spitfire.tbird.com
Dave Fetrow, fetrow@orac.biostat.washington.edu
Kevin Sheehan, Kevin.Sheehan@uniq.com.au
George Cameron, g.cameron@biomed.abdn.ac.uk
Apparently I'm not the only one battling with the Shinko, but it
looks like the upgrade will be a lot smoother than anticipated.
Although Mitsubishi does not provide the Mitsutool software for Solaris 2.x, the
Solaris Binary Compatibility Package (SUNWbcp) will allow us to use at least
some of if not all of the Mitsutool commands. Here, we only use the 'shinkof'
command, and after loading SUNWbcp, the shinkof command then failed with the error:
ld.so.1: shinkof: fatal: can't find file libpixrect.so.2.4
The 'ldd' command fails to find only one file, libpixrect.so.2.4.
I took a shot a copying /usr/lib/libpixrect.so.2.14 from a SunOS 4.1.3 system
to /usr/lib on my Solaris 2.3 machine. Solaris was smart enough to figure the rest
out on its own, and shinkof now seems to be working ok.
It looks like the scanf command should work as well.
If anyone has any further questions or comments, please feel free to contact me.
Incidentally I spoke with someone in tech. support at Mitsubishi who offered to
send me the source code for Mitsutool. He was not optimistic about it compiling
on Sol 2.x, but if you're interested, let me know, or call Mitsubishi in
New York at (914) 997-4999. My contact there was Duncan McNamara, who was both
helpful and sympathetic.
Other suggestions included:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
I would give CAM Corporation a call. They have a product that will run under
Solaris 2.3 that will support your printer called EasyCopy. Their number
is (810) 334-1464 or FAX: (810) 334-3774. They are in Bloomfield, MI.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
If you can't find a driver just dedicate a old sparc1 or 2 to the printer and
just keep using SunOS 4.1.3.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
However, the driver we use comes from AGI, AutoGraph International,
a Danish company. Tel:+45 459-33399 fax +45 459-33222
Their product is called EasyCopy/X.
AGI is also located in San Jose, CA at (408) 436-7227
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
I think you ought to give Colorgraph U.K. a ring on +44 1734 819435
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
I would recommend that you contact the usenet news groups gnu.bug.ghostscript
and comp.lang.postscript to ask if anybody has developed or knows of a driver
for this printer. Failing this, you might be interested in contacting
Aladdin Enterprises direct - if it is important to you, they may be able to
write (or subcontract the writing of) a driver for you, for a negotiable
price.
Contact address:
Aladdin Enterprises
P.O. box 60264
Palo Alto, CA 94306
U.S.A.
voice phone +1-415-322-0103
fax +1-415-322-1734
ghost@aladdin.com
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Original posting:
>We are planning to upgrade our Sparc2's from SunOS 4.1.3
>to Solaris 2.3 later this month. My problem is
>that I don't know how we are going to drive our Shinko
>CHC445 Color Thermal Transfer (centronics) printer on Solaris.
>When we bought the printer 5 years ago, we also purchased
>'Mitsutool' software, written with Sun by Mitsubishi,
>to drive it. However, Mitsubishi no longer provides drivers for
>Shinko printers on the sun platform.
>
>This printer does not understand any conventional printer
>language; it simply accepts raster format. Someone mentioned that
>Aladdin's Ghostscript (gs) can drive many printers, but apparently
>the Shinko is not of them (I do not really understand what gs does).
>
>Does anyone know how I will be able to drive this printer once I
>leave SunOS? Are there any Solaris tools that may help out?
Thanks again to all,
Steve
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Fri Sep 28 2001 - 23:10:31 CDT