Re: localtalk printing (selfreply)
My understanding, though I last looked in to this a few years ago, was
that LocalTalk was not supported by Linux or any of the free BSD's (at
least via a serial port) and probably never would be due to difficult
timing issues. However, you can buy (for ~$100, I think) a LocalTalk to
EtherTalk adapter from a company like Asanté that should allow you just to
set up AppleTalk over ethernet (which is really easy, just make sure
support for AppleTalk is enabled in the kernel) and then have the adapter
convert between the EtherTalk network and the LocalTalk network. I have
done this with an old HP LaserJet and a Centris 650 running NetBSD (it was
quite a while ago) and it worked without any problems. See psf and papd
man pages for more information on sharing printers over AppleTalk and
printing to AppleTalk printers (they're found in the netatalk package).
On the other hand, if it's a serial printer and not LocalTalk (many of the
old low-end Epsons were, I think), you should be able to set it up without
any extra fuss using CUPS and gimpprint. CUPS has good documentation and a
nice web-based configuration program, I highly recommend it. You should
also be able just to use ghostscript (you'll to need to determine the
right DEVICE flag, though) and send the output to the straight to
the serial port.
Nick
On Tue, 24 Sep 2002, CK wrote:
> I wrote:
> > Can anyone give me a quick shot at setting up a localtalk connection
> > under linux for printing (docs on this seem to be a bit sparse google-
> > wise) ?
>
> maybe because it's so easy ... the printer is just /dev/ttyS1 it only
> prints garbage right now but I'm getting there I guess.
>
> regards,
>
> x
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Nick Taylor
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