Printer Driver for old plotter

Good Day Everyone,

We have a very old but very reliable pen plotter. I know, we are back in
the stone age but why mess with what works...and it has worked beautifully
until now. I just upgraded from AutoCAD 2000i to AutoCAD 2005 and from
Windows 98 to Windows XP. Now my HP Draftmaster I plotter does not work.
We have gone looking for a driver online but with little success. Any
suggestions? Please help.

 

The WinLINE plotter driver will take care of your issues.



http://www.draftingsolutions.nu/

 

Try Alternate DeskJet Printer Drivers on HP's web site. HP 550C might work.
http://www.uktsupport.co.uk/hp/faq/altern.htm
Windows NT 4.X

If a driver for the printer in use is not listed in Windows NT 4.0 or
available on the Microsoft Web page, then use the HP DeskJet 550C universal
driver that ships with Windows NT 4.X.

fILE NAME: DESKJETC.DRV

I ALSO FOUND THIS

Although Windows 2000 supports most plotters, you might encounter some
problems whentrying to print with certain plotters.

In Windows 2000, 7-bit serial connections to plotters are not supported, so
you mustuse 8-bit connections. If you notice that some lines are not
printing on a pen plotter,try setting the plotter's control panel so that
installed pens are set at the minimumwidth supported by the hardware. Be
aware, however, that some plotters will not print thinlines unless the
thinnest pen is selected.

Pen plotters can take longer to clear their buffers than other plotters, so
you maywant to increase the port timeout setting to avoid receiving error
messages. Forinformation on changing the parallel port timeout setting, see
Related Topics in win2000user manual.

Windows 2000 plotter drivers for most HP DesignJet series plotters are
designed for usewith margins set to Normal, paper size set to Software, and
auto rotation set to Off.

When troubleshooting problems, reset the plotter to the factory defaults and
thenchange only the necessary settings. All plotters supported by Windows
2000 use the HP-GL/2language. Some plotters supported by Windows can be set
to receive a choice of plotterlanguages; however, to work with Windows 2000,
HP-GL/2 must be selected. Houstion Instrument plotters below theDMP-60
series will not work.

When printing to plotter models that offer a choice of roll or sheet media,
the form totray assignment must be set to the actual paper size available to
the plotter. Sinceselecting a media size or type not featured on the plotter
is not supported, doing so mayresult in misalign output.

Houston Instrument DMP-60 series Plotter and AutoCad 2000Driver Information

I had already installed AutoCad 2000 before I realizedthat there was no
support for Houston Instruments plotters for Windows 98 or 2000. (talkabout
a big disappointment!) I have a Houston Instrument (Summagraphics) DMP-161
plotter.

So back to the Autodesk website....I dug through white papers &
documentation, only to find out that they did not support Houston
Instruments plotters.Period. After several days of sifting through message
boards, we finally came upon asolution posted by a user. We tried it, and it
worked! Yes! Back in action at last.

This works for Windows 95/98


Solution: Add a new Windows printer (in the add printer section) and
selectHP 7585B. Make sure the language is set to HPGL on your plotter. When
you start theAutoCad plotter wizard, it will see that Windows system printer
correctly and accept it.You can tweak the rest of the settings in the usual
way.

I tried the same process with Windows 2000 Pro, but the HP 7585B was
notlisted. I tried the closest thing to it, but no go. I'm going to search
for the HP drivers for 2000, then try it again. At least now we can plot in
one OS!

If you have any suggestions, comments, or questions, please feel free
toemail me or leave a message on our messageboard.