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Xref: sserve comp.os.386bsd.questions:5156 comp.os.386bsd.development:1214 Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!news.Hawaii.Edu!ames!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!decwrl!usenet.coe.montana.edu!bsd.coe.montana.edu!nate From: nate@bsd.coe.montana.edu (Nate Williams) Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions,comp.os.386bsd.development Subject: Re: Epson LQ printer - Can it be done? Date: 16 Sep 1993 23:31:45 GMT Organization: Montana Stateu University, Bozeman MT Lines: 58 Message-ID: <27at11$juc@pdq.coe.montana.edu> References: <TONY.93Sep9182513@marge.apana.org.au> <1993Sep11.124630.22284@gmd.de> <279b1mINNjgb@bonnie.tcd-dresden.de> <1993Sep16.115459.24351@gmd.de> NNTP-Posting-Host: bsd.coe.montana.edu [ LPT bugs ] In article <1993Sep16.115459.24351@gmd.de>, Holger Veit <veit@mururoa.gmd.de> wrote: >2. If this is a bug, and everyone agrees that it is, why the hell hasn't > someone digged into that and tried to correct this? The same reason that the wd driver is still buggy. Because the folks that fix such things don't need it, and are busy fixing other things they feel are more important. > According to > the number of questions about the printer interface (most of them > "how can I generate a..." rather than "why does my ... crash?") > this should be an important area for fixing. But obviously it is > more fun to change db formats, a.out formats to make everything > different than to fix essential things. Hmm, not being able to setup mailing lists because the db code is incredibly buggy, not being able to use the db code in any application that really *need* working db code. Being able to compile the entire system, being able to rely on the tools, having the system stay up more than a day, all of these friviolities have been done by folks who think that those things are important. I would venture to say that those things are much more important to them than fixing lpt bugs. >3. If this worked with pre-0.2.3 lp drivers, is it really so difficult to > compare the working version with the apparently buggy "innovation", and > analyze the effect? Apparently some changed code caused this, and if > it is not the lp driver, possibly another side effect has been built in. > According to "Bill's assertion"(TM) (that most of the patches are wrong > or bad), this might well be, and it is important to identify this bug then. I don't believe Bill's assertion. I and others confronted him personally with his statement, and he could only say that the X patches are not complete, and could have been done differently. Granted, there are known (and are still some known bugs) in the patches and the original code, but by and large the number of bugs that were added via the patchkit are FAR FAR less than the number of bugs that were fixed. >4. I don't know about your printer, but sometimes it appears to be a > flaky or non standard hardware interface of the printer than > really a software bug in *BSD (Don't tell me it works fine with DOS). I agree totally. When first setting up my 386BSD 0.1 box ages ago, I found out that my printer was absolutely and totally mis-configured (I think it was wired to my COM IRQ), but both my com driver and my lpt worked under DOS. (how, I'll never now) Nate -- nate@bsd.coe.montana.edu | In the middle of it ........ again. nate@cs.montana.edu | Running/supporting one of many freely available work #: (406) 994-4836 | Operating Systems for [34]86 machines. home #: (406) 586-0579 | (based on Net/2, called FreeBSD today :-)