[Sunhelp] SPARCclassic parallel port woes

[Steven Farmer]

Hi all,

I recently picked up a nice little SPARCclassic for use as a print server at
my 3 man office.  It works, but we keep getting printer hangs, accompanied
by the message:

Warning: lp is down: printer powered off or disconnected; source: parallel

When this happens, the only way to get things going again is to "init 0" the
'classic, power cycle it, and wait for the reboot.  We have to do this 3 or
4 times a day.

The vendor who sold me the 'classic was kind enough to send another one to
try, but the same thing happens.  The printer (an Optra E310) and the cable
are known to be good, since they were in use for quite a long while before
this, hooked to a pc.  Since the problem occurs with two 'classics, I'm
suspicious that there's some sort of a cabling issue, or that the parallel
ports on 'classics are just flaky in general.  The cable is a typical
standard issue Belkin job from an office supply chain.

Is there something special about printer cables for Suns?

Happy Holidays,

Steve