lhotka@incstar.uucp (Glamdring) (10/21/90)
We are about to acquire some parallel printers for our VAX. Unfortunately our VAX does not have any spare parallel ports :-(. (We are getting the printers through a corporate merger). What is the best way to connect these printers to our 6410 running VMS? Two options come to mind right away - either get board(s) to provide the 6410 with more parallel ports (3 of them) or get serial-to-parallel boxes to connect the printers to DECservers. Which approach is better? What board would I need to provide parallel ports to the 6410? Is there a better solution that either of these? Thanks for any and all help - please e-mail to me and I'll summarize if there is interest in the results. ______________________________________________________________________ / Rockford Lhotka INCSTAR Corp \ | Systems Administrator PO Box 285 | | incstar!lhotka@uunet.uu.net 1990 Industrial Blvd | \ 612/779-1701 Stillwater, MN 55082 / ----------------------------------------------------------------------
jeh@dcs.simpact.com (10/22/90)
In article <680@incstar.uucp>, lhotka@incstar.uucp (Glamdring) writes: > What is the best way to connect [parallel-interface] printers to our 6410 > running VMS? Assuming your 6410 has a VAXBI bus (some 6400 configurations live quite happily without one), you could get some DMB32's (three of them) to give you three parallel ports along with 24 serial ports. This would be hideously expensive ($15K total) unless you need the 24 extra serial ports anyway. Although it would be possible to build a multiple parallel printer i/f for the VAXBI bus, no one has done so to my knowledge. The minimum required complexity of a VAXBI option makes the price prohibitive. There are some general-purpose parallel I/O options for the VAXBI. There is DEC's DRB32, and ours (Simpact's) which is an exact emulation of two DR11W's. However, no printer drivers that I know of will talk to these. They're also pretty expensive, as printer ports go. This leaves you with serial-to-parallel converters. In my experience these work well, and they're pretty inexpensive. Black Box has several models in their catalog. Make sure you get one that matches your printer's electrical interface (Centronics vs. Data Products) and physical connector, and make sure it does xon/xoff flow control to the host. Also, look out for printers that have the Data Products "long lines" option. My personal advice is to get one withOUT a built-in buffer, or at least one with a defeatable buffer, if at all possible. The VAX print spooler system does all the "buffering" necessary, and it is a minor annoyance to submit a print job, look at the queue and find that the VAX thinks its done, only to go to the printer perhaps half an hour later and find it out of paper. You can't stop/abort a job that's in the buffer, either. Lantronix makes a LAT terminal server with a parallel printer port on it in addition to some number of serial ports. This makes sense only if you need the extra serial ports anyway; otherwise, use existing serial ports with s-p converters. --- Jamie Hanrahan, Simpact Associates, San Diego CA Chair, VMSnet [DECUS uucp] and Internals Working Groups, DECUS VAX Systems SIG Internet: jeh@dcs.simpact.com, or if that fails, jeh@crash.cts.com Uucp: ...{crash,scubed,decwrl}!simpact!jeh
grr@cbmvax.commodore.com (George Robbins) (10/22/90)
In article <680@incstar.uucp> lhotka@incstar.uucp (Glamdring) writes: > We are about to acquire some parallel printers for our VAX. Unfortunately our > VAX does not have any spare parallel ports :-(. (We are getting the printers > through a corporate merger). > > What is the best way to connect these printers to our 6410 running VMS? Two > options come to mind right away - either get board(s) to provide the 6410 with > more parallel ports (3 of them) or get serial-to-parallel boxes to connect the > printers to DECservers. You might take a look at the DECserver 250 - It is set up to act as a server for either parallel or serial printers. Some of the third-party terminal servers also provide printer ports. -- George Robbins - now working for, uucp: {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!grr but no way officially representing: domain: grr@cbmvax.commodore.com Commodore, Engineering Department phone: 215-431-9349 (only by moonlite)
mcc@WLV.IMSD.CONTEL.COM (Merton Campbell Crockett) (10/22/90)
In article <1753.2721c4a9@dcs.simpact.com> jeh@dcs.simpact.com writes: >In article <680@incstar.uucp>, lhotka@incstar.uucp (Glamdring) writes: >> What is the best way to connect [parallel-interface] printers to our 6410 >> running VMS? > >Assuming your 6410 has a VAXBI bus (some 6400 configurations live quite happily >without one), you could get some DMB32's (three of them) to give you three >parallel ports along with 24 serial ports. Assuming your 6410 has a UNIBUS (it's supported but may be an option, I don't have my manuals here at home), you could add three additional M7258 parallel printer interfaces (LP11) which are supported by VMS. As the LANtronics Ethernet Terminal/Printer Server was mentioned in the pre- vious posting, you could also consider the Emulex Performance 4000 product. It is a LAT TCP/IP server as is the LANtronics product. Their one upsman- ship in the LAT product race is a Centronics parallel printer port in add- ition to the, more or less, standard 16 serial ports. If your printers are Dataproduct printers, you can also buy a serial inter- face for them. It has a switch selectable Full Duplex ACK/NAK Protocol option which requires you to transmit the data framed by <STX> and <ETX>. It returns an <ACK> when the data is correctly received without parity error and a <NAK> otherwise. It also uses <XON> and <XOF> and hardware signaling for flow control. Merton
Wright_RJ@cc.curtin.edu.au (Robert Wright) (11/22/90)
In article <1753.2721c4a9@dcs.simpact.com>, jeh@dcs.simpact.com writes: > In article <680@incstar.uucp>, lhotka@incstar.uucp (Glamdring) writes: >> What is the best way to connect [parallel-interface] printers to our 6410 >> running VMS? > > Assuming your 6410 has a VAXBI bus (some 6400 configurations live quite happily > without one), you could get some DMB32's (three of them) to give you three > parallel ports along with 24 serial ports. This would be hideously expensive > ($15K total) unless you need the 24 extra serial ports anyway. > [...] > Lantronix makes a LAT terminal server with a parallel printer port on it > in addition to some number of serial ports. This makes sense only if you need > the extra serial ports anyway; otherwise, use existing serial ports with > s-p converters. > Digital makes the DECserver 250, which, to quote the book, "is a high performance full-function Ethernet-based server for both parallel and serial printers". We have one. It works well. /---------------------------------------------------------------------------\ | Rob Wright |psi%050529452300070:Wright_RJ | | Curtin University |Wright_RJ@cc.curtin.edu.au | | Perth, Western Australia |Wright_RJ@cc.cut.oz.au | | Voice:+61 9 351 7385 |Wright_RJ%cc.curtin.edu.au@cunyvm.bitnet | | FAX: 09-351-2673 |uunet!munnari.oz!cc.curtin.edu.au!Wright_RJ | \---------------------------------------------------------------------------/