ALM-II and HP PaintJet XL

[Dan Ehrlich]

Hello again.  First I would like to thank all of you who sent me the pin
out for the ALM-II's printer port.  I am still having some trouble and was
hoping someone could help again.  When the queue is started lpd claims it
is waiting for the printer to become ready:

	psuvax1# lpq -Ppj
	waiting for pj to become ready (offline ?)
	Rank   Owner      Job  Files                                 Total Size
	1st    ehrlich    28   /.cshrc                               1446 bytes

Here is the printcap entry for the PaintJet:

	pj|Hewlett-Packard PaintJet Printer:\
		:lp=/dev/mcpp0:\
		:sd=/var/spool/printers/pj:\
		:af=/var/adm/printers/pjacct:\
		:lf=/var/spool/printers/pj/pj-errs:\
		:ms=-opost:\
		:if=/usr/local/zhome/lpfilters/lpif.pj:\
		:of=/usr/local/zhome/lpfilters/lpof.pj:\
		:sf:\
		:sh:\
		:rg=paintjet:

The machine in question is a Sun 4/380 (i.e. a 4/280 with a 4/300 cpu
board and memory) running SunOS 4.0.3.  From looking at the man page for
the alm-ii it says:

	DESCRIPTION (PRINTER PORT)
	     The printer port is Centronics-compatible  and  is  suitable
	     for most common parallel printers.  Devices attached to this
	     interface are normally handled by the line printer  spooling
	     system, and should not be accessed directly by the user.

	     Minor device numbers in the range 64 - 67 access the printer
	     port, and the recommended naming is /dev/mcpp[0-3].

If I look at the device the major and minor number are wrong (assuming
that the man page is correct, :-):

	psuvax1# ls -l /dev/mcpp0
	crw-rw-rw-  2 root     wheel     66,   0 Jul 21  1989 /dev/mcpp0

Believing the man page to be correct, I recreated the device as follows:

	psuvax1# ls -l /dev/mcpp0
	crw-rw-rw-  1 root     wheel     44,  64 Nov  7 16:04 /dev/mcpp0

Lpd still waits for the printer to become ready.  We have tried
connecting a known to be working Epson (stolen cable and all off of a
PC) and get the same results.

Does anyone have any idea as to why this will not work?  Is it because
I am still running 4.0.3?  Does the printer need to be present and
powered on at the time the Sun is booted?

Thanks in advance.

Dan Ehrlich - Sr. Systems Programmer - Penn State Computer Science
<ehrlich at cs.psu.edu>/Voice: +1 814 863 1142/FAX: +1 814 865 3176