kern/78711: Parallel printer incredibly slow

[Jason Bacon]

>Number:         78711
>Category:       kern
>Synopsis:       Parallel printer incredibly slow
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       serious
>Priority:       medium
>Responsible:    freebsd-bugs
>State:          open
>Quarter:        
>Keywords:       
>Date-Required:
>Class:          sw-bug
>Submitter-Id:   current-users
>Arrival-Date:   Fri Mar 11 22:50:02 GMT 2005
>Closed-Date:
>Last-Modified:
>Originator:     Jason Bacon
>Release:        FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE i386
>Organization:
Medical College of Wisconsin
>Environment:
FreeBSD sculpin.tds.net 5.3-RELEASE FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE #0: Sun Dec 19 15:26:36 CST 2004     bacon at sculpin.tds.net:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/sculpin  i386

ppc0: <Parallel port> at port 0x378-0x37f irq 7 on isa0
ppc0: Generic chipset (EPP/NIBBLE) in COMPATIBLE mode
ppbus0: <Parallel port bus> on ppc0
ppbus0: IEEE1284 device found /NIBBLE
Probing for PnP devices on ppbus0:
ppbus0: <EPSON Stylus COLOR 640> PRINTER ESCPL2,BDC
plip0: <PLIP network interface> on ppbus0
lpt0: <Printer> on ppbus0
lpt0: Interrupt-driven port
ppi0: <Parallel I/O> on ppbus0

>Description:
	The parallel printer runs ridiculously slow.  It prints normally
	for about 30 seconds, then prints one line every 5 or 10 minutes.
	One photo from an iBook client to a Stylus 640 took about 12 hours
	using lpd server to a raw printer queue.  A page from konqueror
	using stc_h driver with apsfilter took over an hour.
	
>How-To-Repeat:
	Print any lengthy document to the parallel printer.
	
>Fix:
	lptcontrol -s resolves the problem.  This looks to me much
	like a timing issue that plagued some googlers in the late 1990s.
	Running in polled mode on this system does not impact the system
	(ASUS P5A, K6-2 500Mhz) significantly,
	
66 processes:  1 running, 65 sleeping
CPU states:  1.6% user,  0.0% nice,  7.0% system,  0.0% interrupt, 91.4% idle

	although it might on a faster, higher volume parallel printer.
	For this reason, forcing the mode to something other than COMPATIBLE
	via /boot/device.hints might be a better alternative for some 
	people.  Check your BIOS to see what modes are supported for the 
	parallel port, and "man ppc" for details on port settings in 
	device.hints.
>Release-Note:
>Audit-Trail:
>Unformatted: