trouble installing new printer

[Lowell Gilbert]

ivan.roth at free.fr writes:

> Hi all,
> 
> my previous (and still unanswered) message was:
> 
> -----------------------------------------------
> Hi,
> 
> I just bought a Canon i865 yesterday. This is my first printer install on
> FreeBSD. I, of course, followed the steps described in the handbook. But when
> running the really simple 'lptest > /dev/lpt0' command, nothing happened,
> excepted the flashing light on the printer.
> 
> The flashing time is depending of the job size, i.e. the light is flashing
> longer with lptest > /dev/lpt0 than with lptest 20 5 > /dev/lpt0.
> 
> I decided to go a bit firther and configured /etc/printcap, and activated the lf
> capability.
> 
> And running lptest 20 5 | lpr -Pmy-printer gave again the same result.
> 
> I tried many research on the net but could not find anything useful. I am now
> installing apsfilter but ask you for some help during the compilation process.
> 
> Thank you.
> -----------------------------------------------
> 
> So now I installed apsfilter and had to choose a driver. I tested Canon BJC-800
> and two or three from the BJC-8200 (said mostly compatible).
> 
> Ok, I got a printed output, but my printers needs approx. 5 minutes for a simple
> plain text page. That is quite painfuly slow, isn't it ?
> 
> I even tried the turboprint driver, but got nothing whith it.
> 
> So at that point:
> - I can print
> - I can go to sleep for a whole week before getting one chapter from the
> handbook printed.
> 
> 
> Do you have anything to suggest to me ?

You're probably running into problems with the parallel driver rather
than the ghostscript (printer) driver.  Try setting the parallel port
to "polling".  (See the FreeBSD FAQ entry for "My parallel printer is
ridiculously slow. What can I do?".)