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From: mw@theatre.pandora.sax.de (Martin Welk)
Subject: Re: lpt0 prints one character / second
Organization: Private Site, Member of Individual Network e. V.
Message-ID: <DGw4vB.IrL@theatre.pandora.sax.de>
References: <46e3ro$ou6@skydiver.jagunet.com>
Date: Mon, 23 Oct 1995 07:30:47 GMT
Lines: 58
In article <46e3ro$ou6@skydiver.jagunet.com>,
Sean Emery <emerys@confucius.omniscient.com> wrote:
>I am having some difficutly getting my printer to print as a line printer.
>It seems that I am getting on character per second sent to the printer. I
>think that my SoundBlaster card is set to interrupt 7, although, MSDOS
>seems to print fine under the same configuration. It seems that my
This interrupt conflict should be no problem for MessyDOS as it
doesn't use the hardware interrupt request for something useful.
For an operating system that depends on that interrupt, this is
definitely a problem: looks like that driver waits for a second
to time out if the printer doesn't answer and then looks for the
parallel port. So that may be the reason why it does any printing.
>1. Will changing the SoundBlaster interrupt setting fix this problem?
I'm sure, please try it out.
Does your SoundBlaster work properly using FreeBSD?
I'm sure, it doesn't. Changing its interrupt will make things easier.
>2. Should I reduce the timeout value for the interrupt on lpt0? If so,
>how?
Sorry, I don't know. But I'm sure that it wouldn't solve the
problem.
>3. Is there any way to do away with this interrupt requirement on lpt0?
You can use the parallel ports for output only (not PLIP capable)
without interrupts. At the kernel boot prompt, boot /kernel with
the -c (configure) option and unset the interrupt for your
parallel port. FreeBSD will use the polling method to see if
your printer is ready again - as it has to run in a loop to
look at the port again and again and again and again, this will
of course sloooooow down your system a little, but for occasionally
printings, it works.
I have a machine here connected to a network of about 10 other
machines which printers I can use. When I need a local printer,
I can only use two parallel ports with the polling methods because
I simply don't have any free IRQs anymore.
(Equipment: SCSI host adapter, 4 serial ports, primary and
secondary IDE interface, network adapter, sound card, two parallel
ports (both without IRQ) and the other usual stuff using IRQs
like the numeric co-processor, floppy controller and so on.)
Bye,
Martin
--
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