Beginning conversion from Hardware RIP to Software RIP

gwint6

New member
Hey guys,

From browsing Print plant looks like a really good source of information for this sort of thing. We're a small setup that is primarily graphic design oriented but we also do film outputting for a few places in the surrounding area. Currently the setup is an old old AGFA Star 400 RIP with an Accuset 800 plus imagesetter. The imagesetter is sufficient for us now and the near future but I am looking to get rid of the Star RIP and switch to a software RIP.

I have an opportunity to purchase either an AGFA Apogee PDF Rip Series 2 v1.0 or an AGFA Taipan 3.01 PS3 RIP. I was wondering if anyone had any extra information on these RIPs. At the moment the Star 400 is connected to a Mac over Ethernet and functions essentially as a printer, could either of the above mentioned RIPs be setup in the same manner or would it be a drag and drop situation over a network? Also would both the RIPs handle PDF files as these are the most common file type we handle.

Any help would be much appreciated.
 
We had a set up with PDF RIP series 2, (oh so long ago) it works fine we been upgrading a couple of times but it is essentially a good solid RIP. Will you have in rip trapping? It was for PS lvl3 and InRIP trapping we moved to the PDF rip from our Viper. We also moved to an Apogee workflow, but for a small shop Preps Ganging and a good RIP may be the way to go.
 
The REAL Level3 PS AGFA RIP began from Taipan 3.1 - the predecessor of Apogee RIP series, but it worked fine under WIN NT, not Win 2000 or XP.
You have to put some investment to go to nowadays - IMHO Harlequin based RIPs are pretty good stuffs to Replace your STAR-headache one.
Let Macs go away for new RIPs!
 
Both the taipan 3 and pdfrip 1 will operate as printers, they by defualt publish an appletalk printer on your network, until os-x loses it's appletalk browser, you'll be able to print to them.

That said, these are old machines. Windows NT4, obsolete and unsupported for a long long time now. You lose that old hardware and you're stuck. I've made pdfrip1 work on windows 2000, but again, that is still old and unsupported. They won't run on XP. And it's not a question of getting the s/w to run, it's low level hardware drivers for the apis board.

Harlequin. best answer.
 
We upgraded from Apogee PDF running on winNT4.0 to Agfa Grafix RIPs on Windows Server 2003 a couple years ago ... the Apogee's setup was clunky and difficult, but once configured the way you want they were solid.

Don't expect to do many one-time, on-the-fly changes with the Apogees.

No experience here with the Taipan series.

jack
 
Note the Graphix rip was a Harlequin setup that Agfa inherited from Autologic.

I'm a big Harlequin fan. Cheap, fast, and effective.
 

PressWise

A 30-day Fix for Managed Chaos

As any print professional knows, printing can be managed chaos. Software that solves multiple problems and provides measurable and monetizable value has a direct impact on the bottom-line.

“We reduced order entry costs by about 40%.” Significant savings in a shop that turns about 500 jobs a month.


Learn how…….

   
Back
Top