tdtyl@hubcap.clemson.edu (theodore d taylor) (02/28/91)
I can't seem to get my Imagewriter to work while in A/UX. It won't respond to 'lpr -Piw [file-name]' and when I try to use it from TextEditor it may only print a few lines. It works very well when in the Mac OS. I'm running: Mac IIcx with 8meg of ram. An ImageWriter II direct connected through the modem port. A/UX is on an 80 meg SCSI external drive. I'm not connected to any network. T. D. Taylor Department of Ceramic Engineering Clemson University Clemson, SC USA
rmtodd@servalan.uucp (Richard Todd) (03/01/91)
tdtyl@hubcap.clemson.edu (theodore d taylor) writes: >I can't seem to get my Imagewriter to work while in A/UX. It won't >respond to 'lpr -Piw [file-name]' and when I try to use it from >TextEditor it may only print a few lines. Hmm. Something is amiss somewhere in your lpr/lpd setup. Later on in this message, I'll describe my setup and make some suggestions. Right now, I'll just note that I've seen the same thing in various MacOS programs other than TextEditor (being a worshipper of the One True Editor EMACS, I rarely have contact with TextEditor :-), where it will print a few lines and then quit. Believe it or not, but if you wait a while (5-10 minutes(!)) it will actually resume printing and print the rest of the page. This happens with both CommandShell and Maple. Something is obviously fried in the support for MacOS printing to ImageWriters under A/UX. Alas, I don't know of any good workaround for it. >I'm running: >Mac IIcx with 8meg of ram. >An ImageWriter II direct connected through the modem port. >A/UX is on an 80 meg SCSI external drive. Almost the same as my setup--I have a Mac IIx with 8M and an ImageWriter II direct connected to the modem port. (Well, actually it's connected to a switchbox which switches between having my PC and my ImageWriter on that port, this being my way of avoiding spending $$$ on a multiport serial card...) As I recall, it came up with little trouble, although getting the printcap settings to the point where it would let graphic files (specifically DVI driver output) thru to the printer without subtly mangling them. Some things you might check: 1) Do you have lpd running and printing for the iw2 enabled? "lpc stat iw2" should give results like this: 236 servalan /[8:39pm] # lpc stat iw2 iw2: queuing is enabled printing is enabled no entries no daemon present (of course, if something's sitting in the queue it shouldn't say "no entries") Also,there should be one "lpd" process running (as shown by "ps -el"), or 2 if it's actually trying to send something to the printer. 2) Check the definition of the "iw2" printer in /etc/printcap to see if anything is obviously amiss. Mine looks like this: lp|iw|iw2|ImageWriter II:\ :lp=/dev/modem:br#9600:oc#0014001:cs#0004060:fd:mx#0:\ sd=/usr/spool/lpd/ImageWriter: (It's slightly different than the stock one, because I have it rigged to be the default printer (lp) and the modes are slightly twiddled to allow binary files to pass thru unmolested). 3) You *do* have the getty turned off on that port, don't you? I would think the MacOS-under-Unix printing wouldn't work if you had it still running, but... 4) Are you trying to print from lpr after having tried to print something out from the MacOS-under-Unix? The printer driver setup for the MacOS emulation under Unix seems to have a nasty misfeature--it opens the device for the printer and somehow gets an exclusive lock on it so all other attempts to open that device will fail until the process holding the lock (the MacOS emulator) exits, i.e. until you log out of the Mac environment. (I'd love to know how it does this--I didn't know you *could* exclusively lock a device like that). So, once you print something from the MacOS emulator, attempts to print anything with lpr will fail until you log out. Sigh. Whoever put this into the MacOS emulation package oughta be beaten repeatedly with a wet noodle... I can't think of anything else offhand, but if this doesn't help let me know and I'll see what I can come up with. -- Richard Todd rmtodd@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu rmtodd@chinet.chi.il.us rmtodd@servalan.uucp "Try looking in the Yellow Pages under 'Psychotics'." -- Michael Santana