Postscript printer, serial or parallel cable?

[Chris Howells]

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On Sunday 21 December 2003 21:54, Doug Poland wrote:

> The handbook states that I can use serial or parallel cabling to a
> postscript capable printer but there may be some advantage to a serial
> cable as it is bi-directional.  I've got several newer IEEE

It also says "In general, serial interfaces are slower than parallel
interfaces", which would be a major factor for me.

> something-or-another parallel cables lying around unused.   They were
> rather expensive and, IIRC, proported to be bi-directional.

I see no reason to not use a parallel cable. They aren't too slow, and I
haven't really had any problems with bi-directional parallel printing even on
older hardware.

> Question:  Is a serial hookup preferable to parallel?  As a future

In my opinion, not. But then again I've never tried serial. The idea of trying
to configure a serial printer sounds fairly hideous to me... speed, stop
bits, parity... no thanks.

Personally I would attempt to obtain a JetDirect card for the printer and give
it an ethernet interface. They are rather expensive new, but you can probably
get one cheap from ebay. I did :)

> possiblity, this modest FBSD box may become a dedicated print server
> with a color laser and ink jet also hanging off it.  I'll probably
> install CUPS and "share" it with windows users via Samba.

That's the setup I have here. Works great with CUPS and the hpijs drivers.

- --
Cheers, Chris Howells -- chris at chrishowells.co.uk, howells at kde.org
Web: http://chrishowells.co.uk, PGP ID: 0x33795A2C
KDE/Qt/C++/PHP Developer: http://www.kde.org
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