laser-lovers@ucbvax.UUCP (12/27/85)
When the Apple Laserwriter came out, I heard it was smart enough
to know when to take input from the DB9 or DB25. Thus, you could
share it between your Mac and those horrible IBM folks.
Now we have one, and ... we have to share a Laserwriter between
and IBM PC and a Mac!!! In particular, the IBM is currently using
the Lasewriter in Diablo emulation mode.
There seem to be several switch settings. Is there one setting
under which the Laserwriter will dynamically select between
DB25 Diablo emulation
DB9 Appletalk Postscript
I am also curious if this is any better if the IBM PC is talking
Postscript over the DB25 at 9600 baud. (Needless to say, if
I had an Appletalk card, they'd both use DB9 and funny coax).
I'm curious also what the Infoworld-promised speed improvements
on the Laserwriter will turn out to be. Ours was purchased primarily
for speed and print quality reasons.
Joel West CACI, Inc. Federal, La Jolla
{cbosgd,floyd,ihnp4,pyramid,sdcsvax,ucla-cs}!gould9!joel
gould9!joel@nosc.ARPAUS.ALAN@CU20B.COLUMBIA.EDU (Alan Crosswell) (01/01/86)
> When the Apple Laserwriter came out, I heard it was smart enough > to know when to take input from the DB9 or DB25. Thus, you could > share it between your Mac and those horrible IBM folks. Yes -- it is smart enough to run in RS-232 mode (switch settings of 9600, 1200, etc.) with input from both ports; Whichever port sees a character first is then listened to until an end of job condition arises (control-D). Then, it checks to see if the other port had anything to say and begins to listen to it and so on. Meanwhile, either port will accept a status request (control-T) and send back a status message that even tells you which port (if any) it is currently listing to. However, you can't "split" modes. That is, it won't listen to one port in Appletalk mode and the other in RS-232 mode. Looks like it's time for you to get an Appletalk card for the PC. I don't recommend the other method of sharing the machine (the one we use to share between a Vax and appletalk): we have an office plan posted with little magnets that stand for the person using the laserwriter and we reboot it a lot (alternating the switch settings between 9600 and Special)! (We do have a Kinetics Appletalk-Ethernet bridge on order.) Alan Crosswell User Services Columbia University Computer Center -------