lpt changed?

[Steve Watt]

Have there been any changes to the lpt/ppbus subsystem recently
(say, in the last 3 months or so) on -STABLE?  I don't use the
printer all that often, but it's recently become amazingly
unstable, sometimes taking hours to print, sometimes completing
instantly and correctly, sometimes "completing" but failing
silently.

I see the following during boot:

pc0: <Parallel port> at port 0x378-0x37f irq 7 on isa0
ppc0: SMC-like chipset (ECP/EPP/PS2/NIBBLE) in COMPATIBLE mode
ppc0: FIFO with 16/16/9 bytes threshold
plip0: <PLIP network interface> on ppbus0
lpt0: <Printer> on ppbus0
lpt0: Interrupt-driven port
ppi0: <Parallel I/O> on ppbus0

And I could *swear* the printer (an HP LaserJet 5) used to identify
itself to lpt0.

The system is currently 4.9-PRE from just after the last security
advisory.  I think it stopped being reliable between 4.7 and 4.8.

It's a semi-production box, so tinkering should be limited, but
I'm willing to do some experiments.

Thx,

-- 
Steve Watt KD6GGD  PP-ASEL-IA          ICBM: 121W 56' 57.8" / 37N 20' 14.9"
 Internet: steve @ Watt.COM                         Whois: SW32
   Free time?  There's no such thing.  It just comes in varying prices...