Re: Samba and alternatives for Linux network printing
On Wed, 31 Jul 1996, Rick Macdonald wrote:
> I could run a 50-foot (15-metre) parallel cable from the Linux box to
> the room where the notebook is located. Then, the printer would be on
> the
> Linux box running Samba. I don't know what the limit is for parallel
> cable lengths though.
I think it is 15 feet (~5 meters) for parallel. To go the distance you
would need a parallel repeater or you could go serial with a drop in
throughput. The HPLJII does not resovle device contention on its ports
however, so you have to configure it for one port or the other (you can't
have some jobs comming in on serial and others on parallel and have the
printer switch automatically). To stick with parallel on the printer
end you could use a serial-to-parallel converter (cost ~$60 (US)). This
plus an auto parallel switch (cost ~$60 (US)) should do the trick and
serial cable is cheap. The throughput would be limited to 19200 bits/second
however. To get parallel throughput (230000 BYTES/second) you would
have to buy more expensive cable and a line extender (a.k.a. repeater)(cost
~$90 (US)).
The external ethernet lpd servers start at around $250 (US). The
throughput is 10 million bits/second to the server (shared across all
devices on the segment), but from the server to the printer it is a regular
parallel connection. Ethernet is probably the most flexible in terms or
wiring the system as well.
_____________________________________________________________________
Don Gaffney (http://www.emba.uvm.edu/~gaffney)
Engineering, Mathematics & Business Administration Computer Facility
University of Vermont - 237 Votey Building - Burlington, VT 05405
(802) 656-8490 - Fax: (802) 656-8802
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