valentin@cbmvax.commodore.com (Valentin Pepelea) (07/21/90)
In article <31913@cup.portal.com> davids@cup.portal.com (David Kenneth Schreiber) writes: > >Can anyone tell me at what speed the Amiga's parallel port transfers >data (in particular, to a DeskJet+ printer)? The 1.3 parallel device used to transfer about 6500 characters per second. In "serial baud" terms, that's 65000 baud. Not bad. I've rewritten the parallel device for 2.0, and on a '030 Amiga you can now send out well over 100000 characters per second in its "fast" mode. Unfortunately this fast mode depends on the printer to assert the BUSY signal fast enough. Since there is a slight chance that an unusual printer out there does not assert the BUSY signal before the Amiga is ready to send the next character, the "slow" mode of the parallel device is set as default. But thanks to an improved cia.resource, even the "slow" mode is now three times faster than old parallel device used to be under Workbench 1.3. Most printers accept around 30000 characters per second. > On a related note, does the Amiga parallel port have a fixed speed, or > will data be transmitted to the printer faster if a faster machine is > used (or does it depend on the printer)? A faster machine will improve the performance of the parallel device considerably in the "fast" mode, but only slightly in the "slow" interrupt driven mode which depends on the *ACK interrupt to be received from the printer. The bottleneck in the slow mode will be your Amiga, while in the fast mode it will be your printer. > On another related note, will the release version of 2.0 have support for > printers connected to a multiport serial board? Thanks. Currently the "Printer" preferences editor allows you to select the parallel or serial port. If you chose the serial port, then unit 0 (equivalent to saying "default" will be the one used by the printer device. Your multi-serial device driver should allow you to determine what unit number "default" shoult translate to. >-Dave Schreiber at davids@cup.portal.com "Coffee, Darling?" Valentin -- The Goddess of democracy? "The tyrants Name: Valentin Pepelea may distroy a statue, but they cannot Phone: (215) 431-9327 kill a god." UseNet: cbmvax!valentin@uunet.uu.net - Ancient Chinese Proverb Claimer: I not Commodore spokesman be