Fast parallel driver for Unix/Xenix AT?

[Dave Emmerson]

In article <25747D15.4126 at ateng.com>, chip at ateng.com (Chip Salzenberg) writes:
> According to emmo at moncam.co.uk (Dave Emmerson):
> >Forget it, the printer itself is usually the bottleneck...
> 
> Bzzt!  You lose the answer-the-poster's-question contest.
> 
> When printing to an HP LaserJet II or a Printronix 600, the printer most
> definitely is _not_ the bottleneck.
> -- 
As I recall, the poster only said 'printer', not 'laserprinter'. Sure there's
a world of difference. 
If you use a dedicated board which you can make yourself in about 4 hours for 
<100 USD, you can do away with OS calls and 'print' at well over 100Kchar/sec
- if you can write your code tightly enough, that is - and leave your PRN:
port for more mundane tasks. A lash-up I tested recently for satellite comms
averaged 50Kb/sec including run-time packet generation, similar to Kermit.
For occasional (personal) use I would have no qualms about accessing the PRN:
port directly anyway, it may be dirty, but it's cheap and I can do it today...

NB It wasn't my software, if *I* were paying for satellite time, the data
would have been pre-packeted on disk, and spooled out directly from file.

ATB

Dave E.