On Mon, 17 Jan 2000, Mark Newton wrote:

# On Sun, Jan 16, 2000 at 01:07:44AM -0500, der Mouse wrote:
# 
#  > I recently acquired a SPARCprinter from a university department that
#  > believed they'd have no further use for it (I hope they were right!).
# 
# I believe they would be :-)  I think Sun EOL'ed SPARCprinters generations
# ago;  I can't even recall whether they brought out drivers for the things
# for Solaris 2.x...

I believe they have had functional drivers for them up until Solaris 2.4.
No guarantees after that.

One requirement was to have a dedicated box to that sucker at one place
where I worked, and even then, we had to routinely reboot the machine 
because it would lose the acknowledgment that the printer was ready
("Device busy" loop) AND forcibly branch to PG&E [%] on the printer.

# I believe it'll be difficult.  I think the SPARCprinter must have
# been one of Sun's lowest moments.  It's been a while, but from memory
# there was a kernel driver which actually interpreted postscript,
# rasterized it, and dumped it out to the printer.  Think of the latest
# generation of cheap-and-nasty Windows printers which speak GDI and use
# the host's CPU to do rasterization and you'll have some idea of what
# I mean.  To say, "the concept sucks," ranks as somewhat of an
# understatement...

They obviously convinced enough people to buy one to make it worthwhile.
It's GREAT if you just happen to have an extra high-power box sitting
around otherwise collecting dust (we had one hooked up to an LX.  Waste
of an LX...).

The concept sucked so bad it made outer space appear breathable.

# An ex employer of mine used to have one on an SS5.  Performance dropped
# through the floor every time someone in the office tried to print
# anything more complicated than plain text, and we had to hunt down 
# Sun SPARCprinter driver CDs every time we upgraded the OS...

When you have specious hardware, you tape a CD envelope to the bottom
of the hardware, or to a suitable place inside the hardware, and you
put the CD there.  Or you put it on the net somewhere.

# 
#     - mark
# 
# --------------------------------------------------------------------
# I tried an internal modem,                    newton@atdot.dotat.org
#      but it hurt when I walked.                          Mark Newton

[lol] Ouch!

				--*greywolf;
--
NetBSD: SIMMs Like Good Code.
[%] PG&E:  Pacific Gas and Electric.  The primary provider of Natural
Gas Line and Electric services in California.