Return to BSD News archive
Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!bunyip.cc.uq.oz.au!munnari.oz.au!quagga.ru.ac.za!Braae!g89r4222
From: csgr@cs.ru.ac.za (Geoff Rehmet)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions
Subject: Re: Printing under FreeBSD 1.5.1.1
Date: 15 Aug 1994 06:53:29 GMT
Organization: Rhodes University Computing Services
Lines: 38
Message-ID: <32n3da$im2@quagga.ru.ac.za>
References: <32hijhINNgab@gambier.ugrad.cs.ubc.ca> <32mr6f$lca@netbsd08.dn.itg.telecom.com.au>
Reply-To: csgr@cs.ru.ac.za
NNTP-Posting-Host: braae.ru.ac.za
X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.0 #4 (NOV)
In <32mr6f$lca@netbsd08.dn.itg.telecom.com.au> tdwyer@netbsd08.dn.itg.telecom.com.au (Terry Dwyer) writes:
>You are no orphan, I and atleast one other person have exactly the same
>problem. The printer driver in the kernel may be the problem, or the
>new way interrupts are handled, at least with some cheap serial/paralell
>cards. I've been in touch with the author of lpt.c who told me this. He
>is a little busy for the moment and probably won't be able to fix the
>problem very soon.
I am aware that there is a problem, however I have not yet been able to
reproduce it on any of the hardware available to me.
The code that does the output of bytes to the printer has not changed
from 1.1 to 1.1.5, so I find it strange that some people had the 1.1
driver work for them, but not the 1.1.5 driver.
What would be interesting to find out is if people who are experiencing
this problem could try out the lpt.c from 1.1 on their 1.1.5 system
(they just won't be able to use lptcontrol(1) anymore), and see if there
is any difference.
The only differences between 1.1 and 1.1.5 as far as interrupts go is
that I seem to remember that some changes were made to make the
handling of interrupts faster, but I doubt that this could have any
effect.
Another common problem is with cheap parallel cards or printer cables,
where interrupts are not handled properly - here the only way out is to
use the driver in its polled mode.
I will try and get a look at this, only it becomes a bit difficult to
fix when I can't reproduce the problem ;-)
Geoff.
--
Geoff Rehmet, Computer Science Department, | ____ _ o /\
Rhodes University, South Africa |___ _-\_<, / /\/\
FreeBSD core team | (*)/'(*) /\/ / \ \
csgr@cs.ru.ac.za, csgr@freefall.cdrom.com, geoff@neptune.ru.ac.za