Re: Printing

[Bjoern Brill <brill@samson.math.uni-frankfurt.de>]

On Mon, 15 Jan 2001, Pat Plummer wrote:

> Has anyone successfully set up printing on a 68k Mac?
> 
> I'm having a heckuva time doing so. Worked in BSD 1.5 and it works in 
> MacOS on the same machine, so I know hardware is OK.
> 
> Any words of wisdom :) ?
> 

I've tried once. Poking in the dark:

Linux doesn't do LocalTalk (does BSD ?). The printer port behaves as
a "usual" (asynchronous) serial interface. Most printers should be able to
cope with this, but some (at least the HP DeskWriter) need 57600 baud in
this case. AFAIK, the 2.2.10 Mac kernel shipped with Debian 2.2 supports
38400 baud maximum (and falls back to 9600 if more is requested).

If this is the kernel you're using, try to get or compile a newer one.
I think the available baud rates are defined by baud_table[] in
drivers/char/mac_SCC.c .

In any case: I've found a second Mac (running a terminal emulator) 
attached via null modem cable (most Mac printer cables should just
work) etremely useful to debug Mac printer trouble.

On the userland side, try both lpr and lprng. The latter is sufficiently
different from traditional lpr lore to break some of ye good olde Unicks
hacks while the former tends to act as a big black bit bucket with a
broken pipe attached.

HTH, 

Bjoern
--
Bj"orn Brill <brill@fs.math.uni-frankfurt.de>
Frankfurt am Main, Germany