J Taylor
Senior Member
Posts:3946
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| 09 Feb 2012 01:00 PM |
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We are looking at upgrading to a POWER7 server, which means no twinax. We can live with that except for a couple of heavily used twinax band printers. We know we could use a BosaNova eTwinax controller, but that seems like overkill for just two printers. Anyone know of any alternatives? |
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RBOrrell
Basic Member
Posts:146
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| 10 Feb 2012 06:19 AM |
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| I had a client in a similar situation. The onl thing that would work properly for this installation was the Bos solution. There are other options but we needed IPDS and that was the only thing we found that worked. If you have two printers, I recall they had a multi-port controller. |
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J Taylor
Senior Member
Posts:3946
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| 10 Feb 2012 06:59 AM |
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| That's not good. I wonder if they'd do AFPDS and if that would make a difference? |
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dexum
Veteran Member
Posts:1088
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| 10 Feb 2012 07:32 AM |
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| I have two also. It will probably be a couple more years before I upgrade the 515 to a Power ? Server. Infoprint contacted me awhile back about upgrading to something newer but I did not have the time at that moment to do an evaluation. These 6400s have been running here for over 14 years. It is hard to turn your back on something so reliable but if maintenance is less on a newer printer I may have to. |
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J Taylor
Senior Member
Posts:3946
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| 10 Feb 2012 07:48 AM |
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The end of service announcement for v5r4 this week probably means a new server for us. Our 810 is treading water OK on v5r4 but 6.1 may be more than it can handle.
Replacing the printers has some merit. We've had them for a number of years. If we took the money we'd spend on an eTwinax controller and applied it to new printers, it might be better to go with the new printers. |
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Gary Kaplan
New Member
Posts:18
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| 10 Feb 2012 07:59 AM |
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| We have used the LAN RPC device from I-O Corp (http://iocorp.com/lan-rpc.html) in the past. You would need 1 device per printer, but I don't believe they are overly expensive (otherwise we would have never purchased them). |
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J Taylor
Senior Member
Posts:3946
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| 10 Feb 2012 08:06 AM |
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| I-O! I didn't think about them. We use them to attach both parallel and serial thermal printers. I'll have to check whether our 6400's have a parallel or serial port. |
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JJ Dahlheimer
Advanced Member
Posts:415
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| 10 Feb 2012 10:03 AM |
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| I am not a printer expert but I know we have a 6400 series running Ethernet, and I was pretty sure it was IPDS. I would check to see if you can get a Ethernet card for it. When we switched we bought the Bosa Nova device and did not have good luck with it. I had a post on here at one time ranting about it but I can't seem to go through my history properly to find it. |
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Rocky Marquiss
Veteran Member
Posts:2518
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| 29 Feb 2012 02:10 PM |
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| We are looking at doing the exact same thing - we have a number of twinax printers. We are getting the eTwinax controller from 10Zig/Bosanova. |
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J Taylor
Senior Member
Posts:3946
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| 29 Feb 2012 02:27 PM |
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The original plan called for complete a conversion from twinax to ethernet. It turned out to be more economical to go with the eTwinax controllers rather than replacing all the dumb terminals and running new cabling.
JJ, I hope our experience with the eTwinax controllers turns out all right. |
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JJ Dahlheimer
Advanced Member
Posts:415
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| 01 Mar 2012 07:22 AM |
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| If I remember the post correctly it seemed like I was the only one that had issues with it but that is par for the course around here. |
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Rocky Marquiss
Veteran Member
Posts:2518
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| 02 Mar 2012 12:06 PM |
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JJ,
No offense - but I'm hoping you're the only one with problems....
Or rather - hoping that whatever problems you experienced they've fixed.
I do know that it is more sensitive to cabling problems than standard twinax controller |
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JJ Dahlheimer
Advanced Member
Posts:415
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| 02 Mar 2012 12:30 PM |
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No offense taken I would not wish problems on anyone. I did find the old post by using google though http://www.systeminetwork.com/forums/aft/96271
Basically the three problems we had were the line sensitivity issue, older display screens not showing up correctly, and printer ids switching. The last two seemed more related to the fact that we are still running s36 environment. |
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J Taylor
Senior Member
Posts:3946
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| 02 Mar 2012 02:36 PM |
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S/36 Environment! Surely, no one is still running that...  |
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J Taylor
Senior Member
Posts:3946
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| 23 Apr 2012 12:14 PM |
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Posted By JJ Dahlheimer on 02 Mar 2012 01:30 PM
No offense taken I would not wish problems on anyone. I did find the old post by using google though http://www.systeminetwork.com/forums/aft/96271
Basically the three problems we had were the line sensitivity issue, older display screens not showing up correctly, and printer ids switching. The last two seemed more related to the fact that we are still running s36 environment.
Funny you should mention line sensitivity. That's exactly what tech support told me when we had a couple of lines that would not come up. We managed to make some adjustments and get them up. Only time will tell how reliable the eTwinax controllers are. |
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