I had a little time to play with this today (my last attempt at setting
up a postcript printer was an old GCC model that only supported
appletalk; needless to say that didn't go very far).

In my case, I'm using a laserwriter IIf.  On the back is a 25-pin D-sub
connector (labeled RS-232C), an 8-pin mini-din and a numerical selection
wheel.  For connections, I'm using the 8-pin din connected via a 9-pin
to 9-pin serical cable (formerly used to hook up a now defunct
stylewriter.)

>From what I've been able to find out, the numerical selection wheel is
used to configure the printers communications settings.  Under MacOS, I
can use apple's LaserWriter Utility to print a configuration page that
will show what the various settings of the wheel correspond to.  Under
each, the D-sub works as a serial port.  The 8-pin works under
localtalk, with the exception of settings 5 & 6, which function as a
serial connection.

I chose setting 5: serial, 9600 baud, 8N1, xon/xoff

On the BSD side, I have the following as a printcap entry:

	# Apple LaserWriter IIf
 
	lw2|laserwriter-IIf|Apple LaserWriter IIf:\
		:lp=/dev/tty01:sd=/var/spool/output/lw2/:mx#0:lf=/var/log/lpd-errs:\
		:br#9600:ms=xonxoff:\

So the printer is named "lw2", set to the printer port, and has a spool
directory specified, and I have an environment variable specified for
PRINTER.

To test communications, I tried:

	echo "Hello Printer" > /dev/tty01

Lights flash...it's a start.  To make sure lp is working, I ask it
to print a few text files.  At the moment, I'm not expecting anything
to come out, since the Laserwriter is expecting to see postscript.
Rather, I just want to see the jobs show up via lpq and also to
see files moving in and out of the spool directory.  Both of these
things happen... and the the activity light flashes on the printer.  So
far, so good.

In order to give the printer postscript, I downloaded the enscript
package (I've used under solaris before -- it is rather nice).  In
the past I've used this as

	enscript [-flags] filename

Trying this, enscript reports "sending xx pages to printer", the
document shows up in the printque, I see new files in the spool
directory, the lights on the printer flash....

...and nothing comes out.

To make sure enscript is working, I tried specifying an output file
(-o option), and it sure looks like postscript to me.

Any ideas?  (I do thank Dr. Bill for his tips.  Unfortunately,
apple's developer site wasn't granting access earlier today when
I tried to get the .pdf he mentioned.)

Is there such a thing as an 8-pin to RS-232 (25-pin D-sub) cable
-- and would I be better off trying via the RS-232 port?  Also,
what are the effects of not having input & output filter entries,
and suggestions for the bit-setting flags (fc, fs, xc, xs)? Yeah,
I didn't get very far with the Apple sample that I posted earlier.
Sorry about that.

Thanks.


Steve Revilak revilak@umbsky.cc.umb.edu
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