OutBurST! Copyright 1991 by Frank Pawlowski Sick of slow printout times with Pagestream? Do you own a high speed printer that is compatible with the HP LaserJet or Deskjet printer? If so OutBurST! may be the program you have been waiting for. The OutBurST! software package consists of high speed printer patches to the normal Atari TOS driver and the Pagestream printer driver. With OutBurST! installed on your ST, printout time can be reduced by a factor of over 20 relative to TOS. OutBurST! is a program that reduces the time that Pagestream takes to print data to HP LaserJet and HP Deskjet compatible printers. With OutBurST! installed on your ST, the time to send a page of data to the printer from Pagestream can be as short as 14 seconds! This compares to times as long as 301 seconds using the standard built-in TOS routines or 47 seconds using FPPRNT. OutBurST! also can reduce the time that Calamus takes to print data to HP LaserJet and HP Deskjet compatible printers. With OutBurST! installed on your ST, the time to send a page of data to the printer from Calamus can be as short as 35 seconds! This compares to times as long as 111 seconds using the standard Calamus routines. BACKGROUND The printing of a page using Pagestream or Calamus consists of two phases, Creating Page and Printing Page. OutBurST! works by decreasing the time required by the Printing Page phase. The actual improvement that you will experience in printout speed when using OutBurST! is dependent upon many factors. 1) MEMORY The amount of memory that you have available will effect printout speed. With small amounts of memory, the program will be forced to print the document in sections and reduce the overall throughput of the program. Available memory also effects Pagestreams' or Calamus' use of it's internal font cache that speed up the "Creating Page" process. 2) CPU CLOCK RATE The CPU clock rate will naturally effect the printout speed of Pagestream. A 16 MHz system will be able to print faster than an 8 MHz system. 3) PRINTER MODEL The last and most important factor is your printer speed. If your printer cannot accept data at a high rate, the program will do little or nothing to improve your printout speed. (This too can be helped by a hardware printer spooler, see below) 4) HARDWARE PRINTER SPOOLER If you have a moderate speed printer or are looking for the highest speed output, one option for quicker print times might be a high speed hardware printer spooler. An excellent printer spooler that has been tested with OutBurST! is available from Technologic Systems. A one meg unit was tested and produced remarkable print times. If you are interested in a unit it can be ordered directly from: Technologic Systems 18277 Timber Trails Marysville, OH 43040 (513) 644-2230 Since the data output rate of OutBurST! is so high, we do not recommend the use of other brands of hardware printer spoolers. BENCHMARKS Included in the table below are test results for OutBurST! The test consisted of the time required to output a full page of data to the printer (PRINTING PAGE time). The configurations tested included an HP LaserJet IIIP and the Technologic Systems hardware printer spooler mentioned above. There are two versions of the program benchmarked, OutBurST! and OutBurSTX! OutBurSTX! is an experimental version of the program that is provided for those interested in the fastest output. It causes mouse motions to create keyboard clicks during printing but no other observed side effects. I use it routinely since the speedup relative to the "clean" version (OutBurST!) of the program is considerable. Both programs are provided in the non-demo version of the program to give the user the flexibility of selecting whatever works best for him. The OutBurSTX! version is included in this demo version. The benchmark also contains data for 8 MHz and 16 MHz CPU clock rates. Also compared are stock TOS 1.4 and my previous effort FPPRNT. OutBurST! still patches the standard TOS printer output routine as was done with FPPRNT and as such will improve the output speed for other applications besides Pagestream (GDOS, screen dumps). 8 MHz 16MHz 8 MHz 16Mhz Spooler Spooler HP IIIP HP IIIP ------- ------- ------- ------- OutBurSTX! 22.5 13.4 26.6 19.3 OutBurST! 28.8 20.9 33.2 25.9 FPPRNT 70.2 40.0 73.3 47.2 TOS 1.4 520.3 300.9 520.3 300.9 Time required to a full print page from Pagestream ("PRINTING PAGE" Time) All times are in seconds For Calamus, tests were run using the PRINTER.CDK test document supplied with Calamus. The testing was done on a 4 Meg 1040ST using an HP LaserJet IIIP. 8 MHz 16Mhz HP IIIP HP IIIP ------- ------- OutBurSTX! 35.1 24.6 Calamus Driver 111.0 62.0 Time required to a full print page from Calamus ("PRINTING PAGE" Time) All times are in seconds THE DEMO VERSION This demo version of OutBurST! is being made available to you so that you may evaluate and determine if the program will help reduce the printout times on your system. Exact performance is difficult to predict and is a function of memory size, CPU speed and printer speed. For Pagestream: To use the program, place the file named OBURSTDM.PRG into your AUTO folder as close to the end of the folder as possible. Make sure that any printer spooling program you may be using is disabled as they are not compatible with OutBurST!. The Pagestream printer driver that you use must be modified next. To accomplish that you must run the enclosed OPATCH.PRG program. After executing OPATCH.PRG a file selector will appear. Select the Pagstream driver that you normally use (HPLASER.PRT or DESKJET.PRT). The program will do a little work and then create a new printer driver named HPOBURST.PRT. Reboot your system to install OBURSTDM.PRG. Startup Pagestream and load the BENCH.DOC document file. Next pull down the Global menu and select Configure Printer. Click on Load and in the file selector, select the HPOBURST.PRT driver and click OK. Finally click OK in the Printer Configuration dialog box to complete installation of the modified printer driver. To complete the test print page one of this document and record the time it takes to print the document (the amount of time Printing Page is displayed). The time you record to print this page should be compared to the time taken to print this page using your normal system setup. When the page is printed, the printer driver will be disabled and no more printer output can be generated until the OBURSTDM.PRG is removed and the system is re-booted. For Calamus: To use the program, place the file named OBURSTDM.PRG into your AUTO folder as close to the end of the folder as possible. Make sure that any printer spooling program you may be using is disabled as they are not compatible with OutBurST!. Next the Calamus printer driver must be modified. To modify the Calamus printer driver you must run the enclosed CALPATCH.PRG program. After starting the CALPATCH program, a file selector will appear. Select the Calamus driver that you normally use (HPDJ.CPD, HPLJII.CPD or HPLJP.CPD). The program will do a little work and then create a new printer driver named HPOBURST.CPD. If the CALPATCH.PRG does not successfully generate HPOBURST.CPD you will need a newer version of the Calamus printer driver. Reboot your system to install OBURSTDM.PRG. Startup CALAMUS and load the PRINTER.CDK sample document file that came with Calamus. Next pull down the File menu and select Print Document. Click on LOAD DRIVER and in the file selector, select the HPOBURST.CPD driver and click OK. To complete the test, print the PRINTER document and record the time it takes to print the document (the amount of time Printing Page is displayed). The time you record to print this page should be compared to the time taken to print PRINTER.CDK using your normal system setup. (Note: Calamus must be exited between tests of OutBurST! and standard Calamus driver) When the page is printed, the printer driver will be disabled and no more printer output can be generated until the OBURSTDM.PRG is removed and the system is re-booted. _______ If the time you record using OutBurST! is better than your normal system setup you can order a fully functional version of the program by sending $20 plus $2 for shipping and handling to: Straight Edge Software PO Box 6407 Nashua, NH 03061 If you are a registered user of FPPRNT, the upgrade fee is $10. Technical Stuff: OutBurST! improves the print speed for devices attached to the parallel port only. When using OutBurST! from within Pagestream a modified print driver (HPOBURST.PRT) must be used to get the full speed up effect. It should be noted that you can only use the parallel port (PAR:) when using the modified printer driver. If you need to print to file or another device, you must reconfigure the system printer by selecting the original Pagestream printer driver. 2.1). ____ VERSION 2.0 UPDATE OutBurST! is now TT compatible! It was a whole lot easier than I than I thought it would be, but I don't own a TT which slowed things down. I relied on Tyson Gill to help me test it out on his TT. Thanks Tyson. Several users have reported benchmark results with OutBurST! using Pagestream on the BENCH.DOC file. HP Deskjet+ 45 seconds (8 Mz ST) HP DeskJet 500 C 28 seconds (8 MHz ST) HP Laserjet III 30 seconds (TT) Generally HP compatible lasers (Panasonic, NEC, etc.) have been reported at 30 seconds or less.