Printer Problems, the Sequel

[grr at cbmvax.UUCP]

In article <3136 at ece-csc.UUCP> mark at ece-csc.UUCP (Mark Lanzo) writes:
>
>I've been having problems with printers hooked onto microvaxes, and wondered
>if someone out there could provide a solution.
>
>Specifically, I've got a uVax II running Ultrix 1.2.  We have an LN03 printer
>hooked to one of our tty ports.  When printing long files (or lots of short
>ones), things seem to break sometimes -- the printer loses some text, often
>part of the last page of a file (but not always).  Sometimes, the LN03
>signals some sort of error (unfortunately, I can't remember the exact
>error, and I can't duplicate the error when I want to!).

>I originally thought that the problem lie in the system not 
>recognizing ^S/^Q from the printer, but I have hooked a terminal
>on that line and tried ^S/^Q while 'lpr'ing to the terminal, and THAT
>worked okay.

Well, here is what we're using, on a 750.  The fc/fs settings are derived
from somthing we got from DEC.  You can work them out from the sys/ioctl.h
header file or something like that.  Of course those definitions are in HEX,
while the printcap file is in OCTAL.

ln|lp|ln03|ln03 laser printer:\
	:lp=/dev/tty09:sd=/usr/spool/lnd:\
	:dn=/usr/lib/lpd:rw:br#19200:fc#0177777777777:fs#010000003:\
	:pl#66:mc#20:\
	:of=/usr/local/lib/lpdfilters/ln03of:\
	:if=/usr/local/lib/lpdfilters/ln03of:\
	:tf=/bin/cat:\
	:lf=/dev/console:

It really sounds like you have some kind of control-q/control-s problem,
normally hidden by the big buffer in the ln03.  Perhaps you have the ln03
set up to transmit parity and the spooler sitting there in the wrong mode.

The dope DEC gave use had the fs# ending in 23, which turns on lf->cr/lf
translation.  For some reason or other we were trying to shove binary
data at the printer, so I turned this off, and wrote an output filter
that would do this translation, unless you specified binary transfer.

In general, the filters are neither needed nor desirable - the general
notion is documented in The Line Printer Spooler section in the Ultrix
Supplementary Documentation - Volume II.  Unfortunatly, they don't reveal
one of the ugliest kludges known to mankind that is stuck in the spooler/
filter interface.
-- 
George Robbins - now working for,	uucp: {ihnp4|seismo|rutgers}!cbmvax!grr
but no way officially representing	arpa: cbmvax!grr at seismo.css.GOV
Commodore, Engineering Department	fone: 215-431-9255 (only by moonlite)