parport and printing

[William Heindl <wheindl@mamacass.ucsd.edu>]

Hi,

I'm having trouble getting printing to work on my parallel port since
I built a custom kernel (2.2.14).  I am running on an IBM 560Z.  In
building the kernel, I selected Plug and Play support, but not
Auto-probe for parallel devices.

When I boot and look in /proc/parport a directory "0" exists,
containing: autoprobe  devices  hardware  irq.  autoprobe and devices
are empty, hardware contains:

cass16% more hardware 
base:   0x3bc
irq:    none
dma:    none
modes:  SPP,PS2

and irq has:
cass16% more irq
none


Now, if I do "insmod parport_pc.o" and "insmod parport_probe.o"
I find a second "0" directory in /proc/parport and the following file
contents:

root@cass16# more *
::::::::::::::
autoprobe
::::::::::::::
CLASS:PRINTER;
MODEL:Stylus COLOR 740;
MANUFACTURER:EPSON;
DESCRIPTION:EPSON Stylus COLOR 740;
COMMAND SET:ESCPL2,BDC,D4;
::::::::::::::
devices
::::::::::::::
::::::::::::::
hardware
::::::::::::::
base:   0x3bc
irq:    none
dma:    none
modes:  SPP,PS2
::::::::::::::
irq
::::::::::::::
none
root@cass16# 

So, autoprobe has found my printer and correctly identified
it. However, if I do something like "% cat foo > /dev/lp0", I get the
error: "/dev/lp0: No such device."   Same for lp1, lp2, par0, par1,
par2, all of which I created with /dev/MAKEDEV.  

Any suggestions what I need to do?  I've been in the parport and
printing documentation, but no luck.  Maybe I'm blind.

I did try building a kernel w/o plug and play at the suggestion of the
printing howto, but this didn't work either.  Should I try enabling
autoprobe in the kernel?

Thanks in advance,

Biff

--
Dr. William A. Heindl
CASS/UCSD-0424       email: biff@ucsd.edu
9500 Gilman Dr.	     phone: (858)534-8016  fax: (858)534-2294
La Jolla, CA 92093   www:   http://mamacass.ucsd.edu:8080/people/wheindl.html