Back around 1984 I got involved with a project to attach Xerox 8700 and
9700 printers to VAX/VMS. We (ACC of Internet pioneer fame) were
approached by DEC to assist in this project to replace about 80 line
printers spread around the Mill in Maynard with just two print servers.
The large Xerox printers had the capacity, but were designed to either
work with Xerox Star using their proprietary Interpress (?) protocoll,
or with an IBM mainframe, where they would be attached like an IBM 1403 printer. DEC wanted them on a VAX-11/750. The solution was to put a
rudimentary selector channel emulation on a Z80 board that plugged into
a UNIBUS slot. I wrote the Z80 code and a minimal driver for VMS, and
Paul Kyzivat of DEC write the print spooler ACP for VMS. I went out to
the Mill to assist in commissioning, and had a great 10 days hanging out
in the Large Computer Group at the Mill. At the end, Paul rewarded me
by booking me a helicopter ride back to Logan airport on the corporate helicopter.

We sold about a dozen of these interfaces around the USA, mostly to universities, and I think one to Caterpillar in Peoria, IL. I went out
to bring each one up. DEC provided the spooler, and people seemed to
love them.


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* Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (3:633/280.2@fidonet)

Reply-To: slp53@pacbell.net

Lars Poulsen <lars@cleo.beagle-ears.com> writes:

Back around 1984 I got involved with a project to attach Xerox 8700 and
9700 printers to VAX/VMS. We (ACC of Internet pioneer fame) were
approached by DEC to assist in this project to replace about 80 line
printers spread around the Mill in Maynard with just two print servers.
The large Xerox printers had the capacity, but were designed to either
work with Xerox Star using their proprietary Interpress (?) protocoll,
or with an IBM mainframe, where they would be attached like an IBM 1403 >printer. DEC wanted them on a VAX-11/750. The solution was to put a >rudimentary selector channel emulation on a Z80 board that plugged into
a UNIBUS slot. I wrote the Z80 code and a minimal driver for VMS, and
Paul Kyzivat of DEC write the print spooler ACP for VMS.

At university around 1981, I was tasked with writing a VMS
print spooler ACP to serve remote satellite printers
(even a few in the dorms). Many of the "printers" were
simply DECwriter terminals, others were small
line printers with a custom interface box converting serial
to parallel. A key requirement was tracking page counts
for internal billing purposes.



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* Origin: UsenetServer - www.usenetserver.com (3:633/280.2@fidonet)

On Thu, 03 Jul 2025 14:15:43 +0000, Scott Lurndal wrote:

Lars Poulsen <lars@cleo.beagle-ears.com> writes:

Back around 1984 I got involved with a project to attach Xerox 8700 and >>9700 printers to VAX/VMS. We (ACC of Internet pioneer fame) were
approached by DEC to assist in this project to replace about 80 line >>printers spread around the Mill in Maynard with just two print servers.
The large Xerox printers had the capacity, but were designed to either
work with Xerox Star using their proprietary Interpress (?) protocoll,
or with an IBM mainframe, where they would be attached like an IBM 1403 >>printer. DEC wanted them on a VAX-11/750. The solution was to put a >>rudimentary selector channel emulation on a Z80 board that plugged into
a UNIBUS slot. I wrote the Z80 code and a minimal driver for VMS, and
Paul Kyzivat of DEC write the print spooler ACP for VMS.

At university around 1981, I was tasked with writing a VMS print spooler
ACP to serve remote satellite printers (even a few in the dorms). Many
of the "printers" were simply DECwriter terminals, others were small
line printers with a custom interface box converting serial to parallel.
A key requirement was tracking page counts for internal billing
purposes.

Strangley, I did the same a few years later. We had been running a
university written mainframe operating system (EMAS, for those who know)
and I had written page counting into that.

I had to repeat this for VMS, where some of the printers were remote, and
the central one was an expensive laser printer (LPS40). I wrote
multithreaded print symbionts to do that.



--
Using UNIX since v6 (1975)...

Use the BIG mirror service in the UK:
http://www.mirrorservice.org

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In article <mcnjp9FgaflU1@mid.individual.net>,
Bob Eager <news0009@eager.cx> wrote:

On Thu, 03 Jul 2025 14:15:43 +0000, Scott Lurndal wrote:

Lars Poulsen <lars@cleo.beagle-ears.com> writes:

Back around 1984 I got involved with a project to attach Xerox 8700 and >>>9700 printers to VAX/VMS. We (ACC of Internet pioneer fame) were >>>approached by DEC to assist in this project to replace about 80 line >>>printers spread around the Mill in Maynard with just two print servers. >>>The large Xerox printers had the capacity, but were designed to either >>>work with Xerox Star using their proprietary Interpress (?) protocoll,
or with an IBM mainframe, where they would be attached like an IBM 1403 >>>printer. DEC wanted them on a VAX-11/750. The solution was to put a >>>rudimentary selector channel emulation on a Z80 board that plugged into
a UNIBUS slot. I wrote the Z80 code and a minimal driver for VMS, and >>>Paul Kyzivat of DEC write the print spooler ACP for VMS.

At university around 1981, I was tasked with writing a VMS print spooler
ACP to serve remote satellite printers (even a few in the dorms). Many
of the "printers" were simply DECwriter terminals, others were small
line printers with a custom interface box converting serial to parallel.
A key requirement was tracking page counts for internal billing
purposes.

Strangley, I did the same a few years later. We had been running a >university written mainframe operating system (EMAS, for those who know)
and I had written page counting into that.

I had to repeat this for VMS, where some of the printers were remote, and >the central one was an expensive laser printer (LPS40). I wrote >multithreaded print symbionts to do that.

We did similar thing with printer filters and lpr/lpd on Unix in
the early 90s (at which point it was starting to get a bit silly
to charge for printing). These were all PostScript printers.
The way this worked was for a custom filter to query the printer
and get the total page count, then send the job (as PostScript)
and then query the page count again after the job completed; the
delta was the number of pages consumed by the job.

At some point, it occurred to us that a job might be able to
affect the page count (as I recall the counter was just an
integer in some dictionary somewhere). In theory, a clever user
could give themselves an unlimited print quota, and avoid all
charges.

To my knowledge no one ever actually did this.

- Dan C.


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