[SunHELP] IEE 1284 on bpp Sparc 20 / sun4m

[P Nutton]

Hi all,

Is there any way of printing to an IEEE 1284 printer from the bpp parallel
port of a sun4m machine? We have NewsPrint running on a sparc 20 and have
just purchased a HP Laserjet 8550 GN printer that is IEEE 1284. We can print
to it from any old PC and also from the ecpp port on an ultra5, but not from
anything older, such as Sparc 5, 10, 20 or Ultra 1. I guess this is a speed
incompatibility problem (strobe width?). We might print via the ethernet
straight to it but have a deep fear and loathing of built-in security in
network printers. Our current print shop is NewPrint/Sparc based and it
seems a shame to bung this nice new printer on a PC as a stop-gap. We can't
port NewsPrint to the Ultras, as we are told it is "binary incompatible" and
well past EOL. This also scuppers our plans to have one Sparc 5 per printer,
instead of most of them hung off a Sparc 20. We want to keep NewsPrint for
now as it does all sorts of nice header/footer, leading/trailing page and
audit/accounting stuff for us.

I can't find anything in SunSolve or the sunhelp or sunrescue archives to
help.

Anyone done this before?

We also found a reference to an SBus IEEE 1284 card, a "Magma Advanced
Parallel Port". Does anyone have experience with one of these? It might
solve the problem for us.
-- 
Paul Nutton, Sysadmin, AWE plc, +44 (0)118 982 7028, naff company disclaimer
to follow
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