ggg@nixdet.UUCP (Glenn G Graber) (10/20/89)
Does anyone have experience using spooled devices (laser printers) connected to a cisco terminal server running Ethernet on a Targon 35 (Pyramid 9810) ? We're very close, but an experienced hand would be greatly appreciated. Please email responses to me ... Thanks, ggg *************** Glenn G. Graber - Systems Engineer ggg@nixdet N I X D O R F Nixdorf Computer Corporation Phone (313) 353-6490 *************** Southfield, MI 48034 FAX (313) 358-1117 C O M P U T E R U.S.A. uunet!edsews!rphroy!trux!nixdet!ggg
hedrick@geneva.rutgers.edu (Charles Hedrick) (10/25/89)
We use Postscript printers on cisco terminal servers, fed by Adobe's Transcript. Some of them are fed from Pyramids. We have modified pscomm to be able to open a TCP connection directly to the terminal server. If you don't have the ability to open a TCP connection in your printer filters, things get sort of messy, since lpd wants to talk to /dev/somethingorother, and there's no obvious way to mknod a TCP connection. We have a hack called lp_pty that acts much like telnet. It opens a pty and a TCP connection, and passes bytes back and forth. If you run this, you can then point lpd at the tty corresponding to the pty. However in retrospect I suspect it would be better to use the same approach that adobe does, which is to supply filters (all of which are really links to the same script) that run a program to handle output, and then make it open a TCP connection directly. Note that neither our hacked pscomm nor lp_pty is 100% reliable. That is, now and then you may have to abort the thing using lpc and sometimes you have to do "clear line xxx" on the terminal server to get things going again. But I've never found hanging printers on RS232 to be completely reliable, even with directly connected lines. This doesn't seem to be any worse.