richard@gryphon.CTS.COM (Richard Sexton) (05/08/88)
In article <1939@sugar.UUCP> peter@sugar.UUCP (Peter da Silva) writes: >In article <492@sas.UUCP>, bts@sas.UUCP (Brian T. Schellenberger) writes: >> In article <1903@sugar.UUCP> peter@sugar.UUCP (Peter da Silva) writes: >> |Personally I'd be happy to give up my parallel port for another serial port. >> |Parallel printers are a historical dreg that has no technical justification. > >> What, huh?? I've never seen anything shove bits as fast over a serial line >> as you can over a parallel line. > >And for most printers this extra bandwidth is completely wasted: they can't >even keep up with 1200 baud. Buy a printer buffer. $49.95 ? >> Try comparing the time to download fonts >> to LaserJet II on parallel vs. serial (even at 19.2Kbaud) sometime, and see >> if you don't want to keep your parallel port around when you get a laser >> printer. > >If I could afford a laser printer I think I could afford a parallel port card. >I mean, what's another couple of hundred bucks out of a couple of grand? In >the meantime I can't: > > 1) Put two modems on my Amiga. > > 2) Put a modem and a terminal on my Amiga. > > 3) Put a cheap EPROM burner and a modem on my Amiga. > > 4) Put a Midi port and a modem on my Amiga. > > ... and any combination thereof. > >Proposition 1: the more ports your computer has, the better. Ok. >Proposition 2: the more versatile the ports on your computer, the better. ^^^^^^^^^ Oh, you mean like "some devices are serial and some are parallel" ? >Claim: Serial ports are more versatile than parallel ports, because there > is a greater variety of serial devices out there. There are more fords than ferarris too. Whatever the hell all this proves. It doesnt really matter if there are LOTS more serial than parallel devices, as long as there are any parallel devices it damn nive to have a built in paralell port. And since those "IBM-PC" (pardon the profanity) things seem to think printers should be parallel, it's "sorta convenient" to be able to exploit their volume of scale, ie cheap printers. >Side issue: If there were multiple serial ports, the whole "serial device > debate" would be a non-issue. Personally, I think it is anyway. We > already have a perfectly good namespace for devices. Agreed. >Conclusion: For me, at least, serial ports are better than parallel ports. RIGHT ! ^^ Now stop trying to convice us all that what YOU think is right is some universal tautology. >Totally unjustified flame: No no. Ludicrous, rediculous off the wall flame that even talk.bizarre would reject. >I have 4 serial ports on my Atari 800, via my 850. > I have 4 joystick ports on it as well. Why does the Amiga have less? Because, twit, you hade to pay almost as much for your 850 as you did for your 800. Poof. As for the four joysticks, how often did you use all four ? Me either. Poof zzap. Now Peter, if you want more serial ports, great, knock yourself out go buy a IBM-PC multiport card with 4 ot 8 ports on it, plug it in and you'll be one happy puppy. Having one serial port and one parallel port is just common sense given the base of peripherals out there. -- noalias went. it really wasn't negotiable richard@gryphon.CTS.COM rutgers!marque!gryphon!richard
peter@sugar.UUCP (Peter da Silva) (05/10/88)
In article ... richard@gryphon.CTS.COM (Richard Sexton) writes: > >> What, huh?? I've never seen anything shove bits as fast over a serial line > >> as you can over a parallel line. > > > >And for most printers this extra bandwidth is completely wasted: they can't > >even keep up with 1200 baud. > > Buy a printer buffer. $49.95 ? First, a quick flame about printer buffers: So for the first Xk of the dump, the computer thinks the printer is faster. After that, the computer has to slow down, And *I* still have to wait for it, no matter how long it takes. Wrong answer. The correct answer to the "my printer is too slow and it's holding up my computer" is a spooler. And you're not even dealing with the right question. Let's look at this exchange: A: You need a parallel port. B: Why do I need a parallel port? A: It's faster. B: My printer can't even keep up with a serial port. A: Get a faster printer. A parellel port is faster than I need, so I should get a printer that's faster than I can afford just because I have a nice fast parallel port. I wasn't complaining about my printer. I was just saying that the speed of a parallel port is wasted on most printers. That is... speed isn't an issue. Capiche? > >Proposition 2: the more versatile the ports on your computer, the better. > ^^^^^^^^^ > Oh, you mean like "some devices are serial and some are parallel" ? No, I mean like everything but printers, just about, is serial. > >Claim: Serial ports are more versatile than parallel ports, because there > > is a greater variety of serial devices out there. > There are more fords than ferarris too. Whatever the hell all this proves. Fords are more versatile than ferraris, because the whole world isn't a racetrack. It's also not a print shop. > And since those "IBM-PC" (pardon the profanity) things > seem to think printers should be parallel, it's "sorta convenient" > to be able to exploit their volume of scale, ie cheap printers. That's the whole issue. And I've been bitching about parallel printers for getting on 9 years now. The only reason printers are parallel is... Tradition. > No no. Ludicrous, rediculous off the wall flame that even talk.bizarre > would reject. Talk.bizzarre is moderated now? > >I have 4 joystick ports on [my Atari 800]. Why does the Amiga have less? > As for the four joysticks, how often did you use all four ? Not often, but I sure as hell want to use two joysticks plus a mouse on my Amiga. At least two or three times a week. I really hate pulling my mouse out and plugging that joystick in for two-player games. I had to really bend over backwards in Tracers to properly handle joysticks and mice (and I think Tracers is the only game that does even a moderately decent job of this). If the mouse had its own port, or there were even three joystick ports, this wouldn't be a problem. > Now Peter, if you want more serial ports, great, knock yourself out > go buy a IBM-PC multiport card with 4 ot 8 ports on it, plug it > in and you'll be one happy puppy. Plug it in *where*? Probably in the PC/AT clone running Microport UNIX that I'm going to buy instead of an Amiga 2000. Hey, folks. Before you do Yet Another Memory Board Addon or Yet Another Hard Drive or Yet Another Genlock... how about a multiport serial card??? -- -- Peter da Silva `-_-' ...!hoptoad!academ!uhnix1!sugar!peter -- "Have you hugged your U wolf today?" ...!bellcore!tness1!sugar!peter -- Disclaimer: These aren't mere opinions, these are *values*.
erict@flatline.UUCP (eric townsend) (05/11/88)
In article <1959@sugar.UUCP>, peter@sugar.UUCP (Peter da Silva) writes: > No, I mean like everything but printers, just about, is serial. Um... I'm not that old, and I've only been computing since about '77 or so, and it's all been on micros (up untill last year), so I was just wondering.. What peripherals besides printers have *ever* used parallel? I've used Commodore equip forever, so it seems, and Motorola S8000's, and a few other machines that had no parallel port whatsoever.. There was never anything I wanted to use, or heard of, or even just played with that needed parallel. Except some goofy AT&T printers... :-) (I'm now a near-ecstatic UNIX-PC owner, so don't bug *me*. I wanted an Amiga, not a 3b1. :-) -- Know Future Another journalist with too many spare MIPS. J. Eric Townsend ->uunet!nuchat!flatline!erict smail:511Parker#2,Hstn,Tx,77007
louie@trantor.umd.edu (Louis A. Mamakos) (05/11/88)
The advantages that I see for parallel printers over serial printers on the Amiga are: * No bogus XON/XOFF flow control to try to deal with. * It *really* is faster dumping bitmap graphics; at least with the hardware we have to work with on the stock amiga. * If I had a serial printer, I wouldn't have anywhere to plug in my modem! Actually, the only one which really bugs me is a standard, well supported way to to flow control. If we could standardize on CTS/RTS or *something* I'd be happy. As it is, I have an RS232 switch, with three different devices hooked up to it right now. And I still have to swap the parallel printer port between my NEC PC-PR105A printer and the Quadram Quadjet color printer from time to time. I need more (DMA driven) ports real bad! Louis A. Mamakos WA3YMH Internet: louie@TRANTOR.UMD.EDU University of Maryland, Computer Science Center - Systems Programming
doug-merritt@cup.portal.com (05/12/88)
Not that it really matters, but let me point out that there *are*
non-printers that use the parallel port. There was an Amiga hard
disk that did so at one time. My FutureSound digitizer goes there.
Etc.
Doug
---
Doug Merritt ucbvax!sun.com!cup.portal.com!doug-merritt
or ucbvax!eris!doug (doug@eris.berkeley.edu)
or ucbvax!unisoft!certes!dougdaves@hpcilzb.HP.COM (Dave Scroggins) (05/14/88)
What we need for our Amiga's is an IEEE-488 port. Most everything I use at work work with this port. There are s few things with RS232 at work, but not much. There's not much af anything with Centronics here. My plotter needs IEEE-488!! So -- there is a use for ALL the ports, serial and parallel. Now maybe I can get some useful info from this discussion. Does anyone have a way to change Centronics to IEEE-488. I have a schematic but it seems to be ignoring some signals. Dave S.
phil@titan.rice.edu (William LeFebvre) (05/17/88)
Why do we need a parallel port? For things that need a seriously high transfer rate. Do printers need a parallel port? Not usually---except maybe for laser printers and things that take whole bitmaps. So why can't we just do away with the port? Because then where would you plug in your DIGI-VIEW!?!?!? Huh? Seems to me that digitizers---sight and sound--- can really capitalize on the existence of the parallel port. [ Does Live! plug into the parallel port? I'm too lazy to dig up the advertising brochures.... ] As for the rest of this discussion: yes we need a multi-port serial card. yes we need more mouse and joystick ports. yes we need another disk drive. Why? because you can never have too many periphreals! :-) Everyone knows that all computer project expand to consume all available resources (it's a corollary to Murphy's law). William LeFebvre Department of Computer Science Rice University <phil@Rice.edu>