Richard Rauch writes:
> You mention that accessing the parallel port causes CPU strain (oddly you
> mention this under ``DMA problems''; as Manuel said, I don't think that
> NetBSD provides DMA to the parallel port).

Ok; I suppose that means being stuck with ECP.  But, running
ECP under (say) debian, I don't get the slowdown problem.
Which means, as you say, that there are probably fewer
interrupts going on, either because of H/W or S/W buffering.

I'd had it classified as 'DMA problem' because when I first
tried to get printing working on NetBSD I had EPP enabled,
and the machine froze when spooling began.  (Infact died
violently; the X display even got completely messed up.)

> (I assume that this works for more than just printers, but the person
> commenting on this was using it for a printer.  I almost got one for
> myself, but I really don't do that much printing.)

There must be a reasonably large number of poeple who do use
printing from NetBSD, though?  It's manageable for a
workstation, but if you tried to hook a printer to a server
type machine this would be a serious problem...

Mark <><