Wanted: drivers for Polaroid ProPalette film recorder

[clift_d]

I've just acquired a Polaroid ProPalette 8035 film recorder but it didn't come with any software  .

Unfortunately, Polaroid have been bankrupted twice since this product was discontinued, so the current support team can't provide any assistance with helping me find a set of drivers. I've checked all the online archives and repositories I can find, but so far have only managed to find update patches for the drivers, but not the actual driver package itself.

The most recent set of drivers for the Polaroid ProPalette was designed to run under Mac OS 9.x, and so I'm hoping that somebody on here might still have access to a disc with the original Macintosh software package. This driver package included:

• Palette for Macintosh - a chooser-level printer driver for all Macintosh computers;
  
• SiPrint Assistant - a spooling utility for unattended printing;
  
• Palette Export for Macintosh - a plug-in for exporting images directly from Photoshop v4.
  

Can anyone please help me find a copy of these drivers... pretty please.

Thanks

[nickbirkby]

I own a Propalette 7000 which I have never got to run, mainly due to time constraints and lack of software. I managed to find some software a while back but its for very old Windows/ Photoshop. Its called Rasterplus. Ive been meaning to track down a machine that will run it and that has an old version of PhotoShop installed.

I too would be interested. These are amazing machines, very expensive back in the day. People doing multi image work with loads of carousel projectors could use these for titling and creating animated sequences. All pre digital projection. Very time consuming to do...

Edit FWIW there is 8000 software here, though its PC as far as I can tell.
https://www.philpem.me.uk/code/filmrec/start

[clift_d]

Thanks Nick

I'd spotted that on Phil's website, but as you say... PC only, and I'm loathe to start trying to put together a whole Windows 95 setup  with SCSI, when I've got a bunch of perfectly serviceable Macs that I could run it from.

If you're looking to test your film recorder, you can actually download Macintosh drivers for the various Polaroid film recorders, including your ProPalette 7000, from https://www.poladigital.co.jp/soft/download.html ... the only catch is they're only in Japanese. I have checked with the company but unfortunately they don't have a copy of the English versions.

Regards. Daniel

[nickbirkby]

Thanks Daniel, those look promising! In particular the Photoshop export...

[clift_d]

Thanks for everyone that checked out the original post - I think I've managed to find a set of drivers that will work under 9.2.1.

[FBz]

Well, if it does work for you...
please share your source for others, here.

Thanks.

[clift_d]

The drivers for Polaroid Palette for Mac can now be found at the following link:

​https://www.mediafire.com/file/ebctuokc4s31q6b/Polaroid_Palette_for_Mac.zip/file​​​

This is legacy OEM Polaroid software for their no longer available film recorders, and should work with the Palette CI-5000 and HR-6000, and ProPalette 7000 and 8000/8035/8045/8067 film recorders. The software runs on PowerMacintosh on Mac OS 8.5 - 9.2.1, and requires a computer with a CD drive and a SCSI interface.

If you get it running, please share your setup and results.

[clift_d]

Just in case the Mediafire link goes down, the CDR image is now also available for download from the Internet Archive:

https://archive.org/details/polaroid-202

The disc image will allow you to install Rasterplus 2.02 and Palette Export 2.0, and there are updates to Rasterplus 2.06 and Palette Export 2.01 available elsewhere online.

[clift_d]

By the way, for people who have a ProPalette 7000 or 8000, you might want to grab a copy of CFR Film Table Commander:

https://www.srs1software.com/CfrFilmTableCommander.aspx

It’s a film table editor for the 7000 & 8000 that only runs on Windows (alas), but which has now been made available as freeware by its creators. There’s no knowing how long it will stay available so you should grab it while you can. The online FAQ says that it will only edit the PC film tables but it seems to also recognise the Macintosh film tables if you add a .FLM code to the end of the film table file name in Windows Explorer.

[clift_d]

Just to add to the post above, it appears that CFR Film Table Commander running on Windows can actually be used to edit / generate film tables for a ProPalette 7000 / 8000 running on Mac OS 9. As above, to recognise Mac film tables in CFR Film Table Commander on Windows you just need to add a .FLM file code to the end of the film table file name. To use film tables generated / saved from CFR Film Table Commander on Windows, with Rasterplus on the Macintosh, you just need to change the Type & Creator codes of the film table with ResEdit as follows:

Code: [Select]

Type 'TEXT' -> 'CFFT'
Creator 'dosa' -> 'NPoL'