On Monday 20 September 2004 10:09 pm, Ross Boylan wrote: > Mine says > parport0: Printer, Lexmark International Lexmark Optra E310 > lp0: using parport0 (polling). > parport0: PC-style at 0x378 [PCSPP] > > I don't really know what that means, but it apparently has no > interrupts and there's no reference to DMA, just PCSPP. Perhaps I can > tweak my BIOS. Unfortunately, my system is interrupt starved. Yep, that's what it means. What do you have contending for interrupts? > The (polling) certainly suggests that I am, umh, polling. Which would > explain the CPU useage. Would this also slow down how fast it takes > to ship stuff out? Printing graphics is painfully slow, e.g., 20 > minutes per page (with 300dpi!). Absolutely! I have an HP LaserJet 1200 hanging off a FreeBSD server. When I was using CUPS to print large PostScript images, it could easily spend 20 minutes pushing the data across. DMA mode wasn't significantly faster - maybe 20% or so - but the CPU was mostly idle the whole time instead of pegged at 100%. Switching to USB cut those times in half, but that would be even more pronounced if my printer didn't have a dog-slow engine. > I was under the impression that USB was a bit experimental on Linux, > but I did form that impression awhile ago. I hope not! That'd make my keyboard, mouse, Palm, and keychain drive stop working. ;-) > Partly as a result of that, and on a more mundane level, I don't have a USB > cable, and I remember them costing more than a completely trivial amount. I'm sure you can get one for $5 or less. -- Kirk Strauser
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