What do you do with a warehouse filled with 2600 laser printers that only work with NeXT's discontinued black workstations? Modify them to work with NEXTSTEP running on white hardware.
That's just what is promised by a deal announced in August by Kentfield, California-based GS Corporation (formerly Goldleaf Systems) and The Printer Works, a Hayward, California Canon OEM. The inventory of NeXT printers is the property of Canon, which also holds several thousand NeXT Color Printers.
Under the agreement, GS Corporation will develop a SCSI-interface card that will allow NeXT's proprietary printer to connect with any NEXTSTEP-based computer. Printing will be accomplished with GS's eXTRAPRINT driver, which uses NEXTSTEP's built-in Display PostScript interpreter to produce raster images for non-PostScript devices. Due to an existing licensing agreement between GS and Adobe, use of the eXTRAPRINT driver on white hardware poses no legal problem, said GS vice-president John Fox (see "Adobe levies PS tax").
The interface card will be bundled with the existing NeXT printers and sold to Intel users at "competitive prices," said Stephen Roberts, president of The Printer Works. The card may also be marketed as an upgrade option for current NeXT-printer owners.
Once the card is finished, Roberts hopes to use the technology for "a whole line of printers based on current-model Canon engines." Roberts is considering offering a 17-ppm (page-per-minute) printer based on the Canon NX engine; a large-format 600-dpi printer based on the BX engine; and an eight-ppm, 600-dpi letter-sized printer based on the EX engine.
The existing stock of 2600 NeXT printers may be sold by either Bell Atlantic or The Printer Works, according to Charlie Houston, a strategic account manager for Bell Atlantic. Expected to cost between $1000 and $1200, Bell Atlantic may modify the printers to boost their resolution from 400 by 400 to 400 by 800 or even 800 by 800 dpi.