A printer driver, which is selected in the Printer Preferences editor, acts as a translator that enables the Amiga to communicate with a particular model of printer. Different printers require information in different formats. The printer driver takes the information from the Amiga and translates it into the proper format for the particular printer. The printer driver you select is used for both the text and graphic output.
The Amiga system software offers a wide variety of standard printer drivers for most of the commonly marketed printers. Some word processing and desktop publishing applications come with their own printer drivers. Commercial and freely distributable printer drivers are also available from third party vendors. These printer drivers may take better advantage of a printer's special capabilities than the standard drivers.
The Amiga printer drivers are named according to the printers and printer standards they emulate. For example, the EpsonX printer driver corresponds to the standards for Epson printers with an X in their name, such as FX-80.
The available printer drivers for the Amiga include the following:
To determine which printer driver you should use, first read the documentation that came with your printer for information concerning the printer standards it uses. If there are no corresponding printer drivers for your printer, you can choose the Generic printer driver. For many printers, this allows you to print plain text without graphics or other type styles, such as italics or boldface.
If you choose the Generic printer driver and your printer still does not produce output, you should check your other Printer Preferences settings and the cabling. Be sure to read the printer's documentation carefully. If you still have a problem, contact your dealer.
A printer driver must be in DEVS:Printers (the Printers drawer in the Devs drawer of the Amiga's boot volume) for it to be available for use. Printer drivers are shipped in the Storage/Printers drawer found on either the Storage floppy disk or within the system floppy disk set.
On hard drive systems, the printer drivers are preloaded in either DEVS:Printers or Storage/Printers. If you reinstall software on hard drive systems, the Installer lets you select and load the printer drivers you intend to use. However, if you do not select any printer drivers during installation, none are loaded and any previously loaded printer drivers, except Generic, are deleted. To use a printer driver other than Generic, you must manually copy it from the Storage/Printers drawer into DEVS:Printers and double-click on it to activate it.
If the printer driver you need is not in DEVS:Printers, copy it from the Storage/Printers drawer. The following are instructions for copying printer drivers:
On a single drive system, requesters ask you to swap the system disks to compete the copy.
On a dual floppy drive system, insert a disk in each drive to complete the copy.
