SUMMARY: Solaris 2.6 with a local serial Postscript printer

From: James Bonfield (jkb@mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk)
Date: Tue Oct 20 1998 - 03:10:40 CDT


Original question (paraphrased):

        A Apple LaserWriter IInt connected via serial port "A" to Solaris 2.6
        does not work. Specifically, the postio process hangs, yet "cat
        file.ps > /dev/term/a" works.

Neither of the replies have so far cured my problem, although I hope they help
someone else with similar problems. However my thanks still go to Rick Osteen
and Derek Terveer for their replies.

Rick suggested that it was a cabling problem (specifically that "In RS232
comm. , the dtr(data terminal ready) line should be from the sun's 5+6
connected to pin 20 of the printer side. Also, be sure that the ground lines
are connected as well(pin 7 to pin 7)."). However I'm using the same cable and
printer that were originally connected to a Sun SparcStation 2 running SunOS
4.1.1 (where it worked fine).

Derek mentioned that perhaps software flow control is enabled on the serial
port. Postio already appears to reset this (I used truss to check), but I
could be mistaken.

I have now tried replacing the Solaris printer software with LPRng, which with
virtually no trouble was working much better than my days of work with the
Solaris spooler. However I'm now getting dropped pages when using LPRng, but
I think this problem perhaps is the terminal characteristics.

        James

-- 
James Bonfield (jkb@mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk)   Tel: 01223 402499   Fax: 01223 213556
Medical Research Council - Laboratory of Molecular Biology,
Hills Road, Cambridge, CB2 2QH, England.
Also see Staden Package WWW site at http://www.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/pubseq/



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