My WF-2630 died recently and left me with a need to replace it. I thought that while I was replacing the printer, I might go with one that would print a larger page size like 11″x17″. Several companies had all in one printers that would handle that large size. Epson has a couple different models but they are very large around 20″x35″, HP has some but they are more expensive than I wanted. I settled on a Brother that was more moderately sized and priced. I also have Brother laser printer which I like.

Once I had the printer in hand and set up it was time to integrate it with ersatz-11. First, I wanted to pick which printer would get my output. It was really simple once I figured it out. All I had to do was set the desired printer as the windows default printer.

In the configuration file for Ersatz-11 (e11.ini), I had to change the printer assignment line to:

ASSIGN LP0: OSPRINT: /FORM:LETTER/SIZE:132X110/SIMPLEX

which breaks worn like this:

/FORM:/LETTER is regular 8.5″x11″ paper

/SIZE:132X110 is 132 columns (printing at 16 characters per inch) and 110 lines (10 lines per inch)

/SIMPLEX is only one side of the page

Once that was accomplished, I needed to fire up Ersatz-11, my emulated PDP 11/70 and make a change to the spooler command file (SPOOL.CMD). This time around, /DFL:107/LEN:107/HEAD:3/WIDTH:132, the DFL and LEN are set to 107 lines, the head to 3 lines and the /WIDTH to 132 columns.

Notice the /FORM:LETTER is for 8.5″x11″ paper, even though I was planning on using 11″x17″. Turns out both brother printers print at 16 characters per inch and 10 lines per inch unless told otherwise. That’s nice because although my new printer will print 11″x17″ it does so only one sheet at a time, with the operator hand feeding each sheet. Also, when I went to make these changes, I could not find any references to go by. I could not find where I got the information for the Ersatz-11 configuration file or spooler command file.