Personal LFR Plus - Lasergraphics

We discovered one of these units in our warehouse. No one is for sure what it

is.

Can someone describe in laymans terms what this is and what it does?

Is it a scanner?

Is it a printer?

OMG, a Personal LFP Plus. Haven't used one in years.

It's a "film recorder", a device that optically "prints" on a piece of photographic film using lasers. In short, it lets you make computer generated slides or negatives.

The "Personal LFR" is a 35mm sized device. The resolution is pretty good, 4096 x 2731 pixels, so the slides look very sharp and detailed compared to most digital projectors. It uses a SCSI interface. The software to run it is available from http://www.lasergraphics.com/

The software is called "Rascol" and is available both for computers and fruit flavored computer substitutes. The software has not been updated for a couple of years, and I don't believe it is going to be, since film recorders are not exactly a hot item in 2007. Fruit munchers have to use the older operating systems, there is no OS/X support for Rascol, just system 8 and 9. Windows XP users have to use version 5 software, since version 4 isn't compatible with anything past Windows 2000.

Version 4 software is embarrassing. Version 5 is $400, which is actually a bit higher than the eBay value of a used Personal LFR Plus. If you don't have a version 5 software key for your LFR, you've got a big, ugly paperweight.