Bug 13021

Summary:	Parallel port printer driver is flaky
Product:	Base System	Reporter:	George Mitchell <george>
Component:	i386	Assignee:	freebsd-bugs (Nobody) <bugs>
Status:	Closed FIXED
Severity:	Affects Only Me
Priority:	Normal
Version:	3.2-RELEASE
Hardware:	Any
OS:	Any

Description George Mitchell 1999-08-08 06:50:00 UTC

	Graphical output, such as from ghostscript, works briefly
	(for about 1/4 inch of output), then printer drops back
	into text mode as if reset by the parallel port, and the
	remainder of the output consists of random garbage.

	Problem appeared when I upgraded from FreeBSD 2.2.7 to
	FreeBSD 3.2.  I tried to configure the deprecated olpt
	device, but it is not there (despite a reference to it
	in the LINT system configuration file).

Fix: 

I wish I knew.
How-To-Repeat: 
	Send output from ghostscript to a non-PostScript printer
	without a page buffer (such as a DeskJet) on a parallel port.

Comment 1 sprice 1999-08-29 21:11:39 UTC

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 14 Aug 1999 01:21:21 -0700 (PDT)
From: George Mitchell <george@m5p.com>
To: gnats-admin@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: i386/13021: Parallel port printer driver is flaky

I can "fix" this problem by setting the ppc0 flags to 0x45, disabling the
ECP and FIFO features of the port.  Apparently, when ECP and the FIFO
features get turned on and the port is talking to an ordinary printer,
characters get randomly dropped ...                      -- George

Comment 2 Steve Price freebsd_committer

1999-08-29 21:12:27 UTC

State Changed
From-To: open->closed

The originator noted that he was able to work around the problem by 
using 'ppc0 flags 0x45' which effectively disables ECP and FIFO for 
the port.