brw@jim.odr.OZ.AU (Brian Wallis) (06/14/88)
I was wondering if anyone knew if it was possible to use both the serial D25 connector and the appletalk connector on the LaserWriter at the same time with the printer taking jobs from both ports? Or are both ports on the same serial hardware (as I suspect they are). If not, what is the cheapest way of using the laserwriter from both an appletalk device (a Mac) and a serial device (a Vax running Ultrix 2.0). Is it possible to convince the Mac to send it's postscript out a serial port into the vax and run a simple spooler from that port onto the print queue, or is there a simple "Unix" to appletalk interface to go the other way? -- Brian Wallis (brw@jim.odr.oz) O'Dowd Research P/L. (03) 562-0100 Fax: (03) 562-0616, Telex: Jacobs Radio (Bayswater) 152093
suitti@haddock.UUCP (Steve Uitti) (07/06/88)
In article <8806281358.AA12292@brillig.umd.edu> brw@jim.odr.OZ.AU (Brian Wallis) writes: >I was wondering if anyone knew if it was possible to use both the >serial D25 connector and the appletalk connector on the LaserWriter at >the same time with the printer taking jobs from both ports? Or are >both ports on the same serial hardware (as I suspect they are). As far as I can tell, it is worse than that. If you connect both at the same time, you may damage the LaserWriter. I don't recall what gets damaged, but it did take awhile to get the printer back online. >If not, what is the cheapest way of using the laserwriter from both an >appletalk device (a Mac) and a serial device (a Vax running Ultrix >2.0). Is it possible to convince the Mac to send it's postscript out a >serial port into the vax and run a simple spooler from that port onto >the print queue, or is there a simple "Unix" to appletalk interface to >go the other way? At Harvard (I'm no longer there), we had a VAX 780 (running 4.2 BSD, but it should work from Ultrix 1.2 or 2.x) which talked to the LaserWriter Plus via 9600 BAUD serial. It would use this for its own printing, and users could print (for example) MicroSoft Word 3.01 documents by sending them to the VAX and using a program called "maclaser". I believe all "maclaser" did was prepend a header to the file and send it to "lpr". The slightly hacked version of "lpr" would then do page count queries to the printer for billing purposes (sigh). On occasion, we would 1) power down the printer, 2) disconnect the serial line, 3) connect an Appletalk, 4) power up & use it for awhile (usually only one or two documents), 5) reverse the above proceedure. Stephen.