HP DraftMaster I

[Roger Holmes]

> From: Fred Cisin <cisin at xenosoft.com>
>
>> Which port are you using, serial or parallel?
>
> With a Draftmaster I?

No, you got me. My mind had strayed forward to the HP DesignJets  
(large format ink jet printers) where a higher data rate was very  
useful, and back to several other manufacturers such as Watanabe 
(Graphtec) and a whole host of others. For some reason HP stuck with  
serial and HP-IB. I can't remember which was their first parallel  
plotter, maybe the electrostatic model (HP7500?) which could emulate  
a pen plotter using HP/GL or take semi vector data plus raster fills  
using HP-GL/2 and proper raster with RTL as well I think. Now that  
must be a rare animal now, and probably difficult to get consumables  
for. At least it never dropped ink on the floor, we still have big  
patches of yellow and magenta on the carpet in the office which  
leaked out from another electrostatic we borrowed to write a driver  
for. Very clever engineering which cut paper off a roll, wrapped it  
around a big drum, plotted the four colour passes and ejected the  
paper. It just got bored if you didn't use it for a few weeks and got  
incontinent. Can't remember the name.