[rescue] Sun NP20 stuff

der Mouse mouse at Rodents-Montreal.ORG
Sun Nov 30 13:58:05 CST 2008


>>> The difference between the two (other than PPM/etc) was that the
>>> NEWSprinter used a high speed parallel interface to the printer.
>> What did the SPARCprinter use, then?
> I believe it used 'standard' parallel... i.e. like a PC... but I'm
> getting a bit foggy on it.

The device I worked with - which I thought was called a SPARCprinter,
though since I'm not in the right building I can't check physical
labels just now - did not use a "standard" parallel port.  The host
hardware was different (lpvi instead of bpp) and the connector was
mechanically different on the host end (I forget what the printer end
looked like).  It may have been electrically similar at the
printer-cable interface point, though I'm inclined to doubt it.

The biggest difference with the host interface was that it was tuned
for transferring large amounts of data; it had a real DMA interface
rather than having to stuff each byte into a register individually.
This was just as well, since it had to transfer a megabyte or so of
data per page (or more, at higher resolutions or larger page sizes - it
could do 300x300 or 400x400, under host control).

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