DEClaser 1152

Feeling a bit nostalgic right now that I had a DEClaser 1152 postscript laser printer left at the family business. It was liquidated when the business relocated. I was given a terse warning by an ex-co-worker to come collect things before the liquidation, but I was dealing with a newborn at the time, and didn’t give it much thought.

http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/brochures/DEC-DEClaser-1152-PostScriptLevel-2-LaserPrinter.pdf

The cassette feeder was not reliable on my unit and needed some refurb, I had to insert pages one-at-a-time in the cut-sheet feeder, the postscript engine was pretty slow at 4ppm (assuming simple postscript), and it was only 300dpi. It had ye olde Canon LX engine, same as the HP laserjet IIp. The fuser was on the way out, too.

I had gotten it off ebay for a pittance, and it survived its journey through US postal service shipped in a copy paper box with a handful of packing peanuts. It was quite amazing it survived the trip, but it did.

I’m sure if I had taken it home it would already have been dumped, since no surviving laser printer continues existence in my home. It supported serial, parallel, and appletalk ports, and I always wanted to hook the serial MMJ port to one of my DECStations, to justify its continued existence as a print server. (Yes, I had the ppd files, and CUPS worked pretty well for this printer.)

(Now what was the declaser which had the crab as the startup splash?)

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