[SunRescue] Sun SBUS BiPro printer interface - whither cables?

[Chris Powell]

> >I bought one of those SBUS printer interface cards from a fellow on eBay,
> >and discovered, when it arrived, that it uses a very small connector.
> >There are actually two connectors.  I have no idea what the smaller one
> >is for but I'm hoping that the other can, with the right cable, let me
> >connect my old laserjet.  Does anyone know whether it's possible to do
> >this, and if so, where cables can be got?
> >
> They are Sun parallel port cables, whose connector is very similiar to that
> of a Sun AUI connector (the thin ones on SS5s and up).

The larger connector is a standard bi-directional parallel printer port.
The smaller one is for the 25-way D connection to the funky SPARCprinter,
I don't think this is standard parallel connection? The SPARCprinter
has no raster engine, all the Postscript or plain text conversion to
raster is done by the Sun using NeWSprint.

You will need drivers to drive the card with SunOS 4.x (for certain)
and SunOS 5.x (I think). Look for NeWSprint software and grab the
drivers off that. I think support for the card was dropped from
SunOS 5.6.


Chris.