jgd@Dixie.Com (John G. DeArmond) (02/27/91)
sichermn@beach.csulb.edu (Jeff Sicherman) writes: > In this vein, does anyone know of any smart port cards, or DMA driven >parallel cards for the ISA bus that will offload the main processor of >this task. Seems like a waste to use 386 and 486 processors for this >kind of junk. We have a product under development that is even better, IMHO :-) We call it the Printer Nidget (TM) (Network Widget). This is an inexpensive little modem-sized device that sits on a TCP/IP ethernet and can drive up to 2 printers with either parallel or serial ports. Though the device was not originally conceived as a high speed printer driver but rather as an inexpensive way to spread printers about a network, it should do the job quite well. Not being limited by the PC bus architecture, its performance should be rather good. I happen to be working on the high speed parallel port driver right now :-) This architecture really makes a lot of sense for driving even moderate speed printers. Rather having to deal with a port a byte at a time, the host simply puts the data in an IP packet and lets the intelligence of the ethernet adaptor handle shoveling out the bits. For more info, send your snail-mail address to me and I'll pop out some propaganda :-) John -- John De Armond, WD4OQC | "Purveyors of speed to the Trade" (tm) Rapid Deployment System, Inc. | Home of the Nidgets (tm) Marietta, Ga | {emory,uunet}!rsiatl!jgd |"Politically InCorrect.. And damn proud of it