Out-of-date BS2000 printers
Mechanical printers
Numerous BS2000 customers are still using mechanical printers that have reached the MEK90 status.

LIP printers
The LP65 printers support the LIP data stream. This data stream is not developed any more, and no new printer is able to support it. The main LIP printer is the 3365. This protocol has also been supported by the PageStream printers PS55, PS75 and PS158. For the comparisons, we will consider a speed of 55 to 158 pages/minute.

HP printers
The most used printers are the “HP” (High Performance) laser printers from Océ. The HP data stream is a frozen technology. It is however still supported, up to now, by the SRA controller running on Océ Production printers, as an alternative to the modern AFP/IPDS data stream, but the printer must be re-booted to switch from a mode to the other one. The support of HP will how-ever be removed from the controller relatively soon.

Spool & Print products overview
Several printing products are (or have been) used on BS2000/OSD:

• Local Spool This usually concerns the devices locally attached to the host by CT2 or CTS (Escon). Such a connection provides a very high reliability. For local printing, the user does not specify the printer to be used, but rather the required features (data stream, resources ...). The device selection results from the scheduling parameters and algorithm. All 333x and 334x printers belong to the local Spool with a speed equivalent to 15 – 60 pages/min. The LIP and HP printers also belong to this category. The HP printers have a speed ranging from 50 to 1000 pages/min. Let us remark that neither the LIP, nor the HP printers can be considered as a candidate for replacing the mechanical printers; in contrary, they both belong to a frozen technology, and also need a replacement strategy. Last but not least the LAN printer 9045 (see RSO), connected to an SX server (or SR2000), with a speed equivalent to 15-50 pages/min, is also supported by local Spool, via Line Printer emulation in X2000 (resp. SINIX2000).

 

Download Full Whitepaper: Replacement Strategy for Out-of-Date Printers in BS2000/OSD