Home Etch Circuit Boards

[tommy]

I'm getting ready to start making my own circuit boards from all of the circuits I've found here. And last weekend, I picked up an old HP 5L laser printer for a few bucks so I can do the toner-transfer method.

The problem that I've run into is that with WinXP-Pro is there doesn't seem to be any way to increase the printing density using the drivers in XP. What are the settings I should be looking for? I think I may to have to resort to some old fashioned "DOS trickery" to set the printer's default density setting to something higher than the factory default, but if there's an easier solution, I'm open for suggestions. According to HP Tec Support, there is no way to adjust for print density using XP.

Not being one to let a statement like that stand in my way, I'm looking for how others get around this limitation of XP.

Thanks (in advance) for your sugesstions

Tom

[Wayne J]

can you not use some older software for the printer and have XP 'run as' 98? I know XP will do that, but will it work for this application is the question.

[omzig]

You could try sending a PJL escape sequence to the printer to change the default density to 5.

The sequence that you want is:
[escape]%-12345X@PJL DEFAULT DENSITY=5

Is this printer connected directly via a parallel port? If so, I've attached a file with the escape sequence that you could send to the printer from a DOS command prompt using: copy density.txt LPT1

I'm pretty sure that I remember that the 5L will lose this setting every time that the printer is reset or powered down, so you would have to do this each time you wanted to print a layout. With other models, this setting is persistent.