Nathaniel D. Daw writes:
>On Tue, 9 Jul 1996, Monroe Williams wrote:
>> I have written a NetBSD driver for the original StyleWriter.
>
>I'd love to play with it.

A while ago I put together a package to send to a couple of folks.  I'll
dig it out tonight.  It contains the driver program, a couple of shell
scripts, and instructions on setting up the proper printcap file.  It
requires GhostScript to work.

A warning: this setup has _only_ been tested on NetBSD-mac68k.  I suspect
that there may be problems on little-endian machines that I haven't even
thought of.  Caveat emptor.

>> (I didn't use the ghostscript framework because I couldn't figure out
>> how to enable two- way communication with the printer
>
>I think that may not be possible with Ghostscript, as a matter of fact.

That's what I thought.  I just haven't dug through the ghostscript
sources enough to feel comfortable making such a broad statement on a
mailing list. ;)

>> The original StyleWriter expects the serial port to run at 57600,
>> N-8-1, _no_ hardware or software flow control. 
>
>Do you know anything about cabling? I have a suspicion that Mac printer
>cables are nulled out (because if you connect one between two Macs you can
>have a two-mac AppleTalk network.) I'm trying to use a Mac modem cable +
>gender changer to connect the printer to my PC, but I haven't yet figured
>out if anything is getting through.  Will adding a null modem to the mix
>help?

A standard Mac printer cable will definitely serve as a null-modem
cable.  (i.e.  you can connect two macs with a printer cable and
communicate using a terminal program on each end.)  I know I've used a
Mac modem cable to connect a Mac and a PC at some point, but I don't
remember for sure whether a null-modem was necessary.  I think it might
be.

Do you have a Mac available that you can test the cable with?  If a Mac
and a PC can talk over a cable (terminal programs would be the simplest
test), then the same cable will probably work with a printer.  The only
time I've ever needed a "special" (non-null-modem) din8 cable was
hooking up a switchbox.

>> Hmm...  Do you know which particular model(s) work with the bubblejet
>> drivers?  Also, do you know if documents describing the bubblejet
>> protocols are available online?
>
>I have to check for sure, but I think the ghostscript documentation says
>that "Apple printers like the stylewriter 2x00" work with the bjc600
>driver. You might pick up the Ghostscript source; some of the canon
>drivers are fairly commented and one of them has some notes as well.~

I'll take a look.  I may need a later version of ghostscript than the
one I have.  I have a StyleWriter 2400 (in addition to an original
StyleWriter), and the last time I experimented with adding support for
it, I kept hanging the machine.  (This was with mac68k -current a few
months ago.)  We've had enough changes with interrupt levels and serial
drivers since then that I should probably give it another try.

-- monroe
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Monroe Williams                                      monroe@teleport.com