Re: serial printer and old world
On Sat, Jun 05, 2004 at 06:00:03PM +0200, karim wrote:
> Hello,
> I have tried to make work a laser writer 8/600 and a style writer 2 a
> pmac 8200 (7200) and failed on a yellow dog at first, and then on the
> debian.
> Cups and foomatic are installed, but it's not ok.
> I have googled a lot and what I tried didn't workd.
>
> I would like to know if anybody managed to make this serial printers
> works on an old world mac, or if it's hopeless.
> I am certainly missing something though.
Here's my advice: get the printer manual, check the cabling, and try
Minicom.
I use serial to a LaserWriter Select 360.
Cabling gotcha? At first it looked hopeless because I didn't
understand the cabling needed to connect the Mac serial port (9-pin
mini-DIN) to the printer serial port (DB25). A modem cable connects
at both ends, but the wiring is wrong because a modem is DCE (data
communications equipment) but a printer is DTE (data terminal
equipment). What does work for me is a modem cable together with a
DB-25 crossover cable. (Later I acquired a proper single cable.)
The best reference I found for cabling was at the NetBSD web page.
Serial settings gotcha? Back when I tried `setserial', the results
were painful (crashes, freezes, etc.). What worked best for setup was
Minicom, in which I fiddled with serial settings to finally reach the
exciting moment, my first view of my printer's PostScript prompt!
Miscellaneous notes: Now I use lpr, though presumably CUPS ought to
work. I use a miniature script to call stty at boot time. Minicom
remains useful: in particular, control-T asks about printer status and
control-D terminates a failing print job (which sometimes happens if I
try to print the wrong kind of file). I have accumulated, but now
seldom use, various PostScript files to get and set printer
configuration (so I never need MacOS). Using the serial line at 57600
seems a little slower than using LocalTalk from MacOS. My only
remaining trouble is that for some unknown reason I sometimes have to
send control-D before anything will print.
Summary: check cabling, get printer manual, try Minicom. Don't be
afraid to just dump a file to the printer to see what happens. In the
case of a PostScript printer, be prepared to spend some time learning
a bit of the language.
--
John
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