impact printer recommendations

[S Molly T]

I need to know of a good impact printer that will work with FMP 6 across multiple platforms (OS X, win 98, win XP, os 9) and will print on three-part forms. I have looked at a few okidata printers, but am not sure of the compatibility with FMP.

Basically we will be printing data from one of our FMP database files onto pre-printed forms.

[stanley]

S Molly T:

That's a tough one. I've used the Epson FX-880 series (which I believe has been replaced by the FX-890) on Windows machines on cross-platform solutions. It has performed admirably for three-part forms, although there is a great deal of tweaking that has to be done with print layouts, as 9-pin impact printers are very definitely not WYSIWYG. I understand that one can get these printers to work with the Mac via Gimp-print, but have not tried this myself. Someone responded to a query of mine here on the Forums a year or two ago about this and said they had gotten it to work, but I've never had the time to try it myself. You may wish to search for this - I can't give you any clues to what to look for. I also can't tell you much regarding OS 9, although I seem to remember not being able to find an impact printer that would do 3-part forms when designing an OS 9 system about four years ago - I ended up having to use a Windows box for that.

You should consider that FMP is totally cross-platform, and in a networked environment you can always have a dedicated machine for your impact printer - as they're usually very Windows-friendly, you can just deal with the printer via a Windows box, and not bother with the problematic issues of having a Mac deal with that type of printer.

Hope I'm making sense - I've been up for 18 hours working on a solution and I'm feeling a bit delirious.

-Stanley