From: der Mouse <mouse@Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA>

>If you say that, you've never had to deal with the LP-11.  (It's a
>line-printer interface.)  It could accept only one byte at a time,
>required PIO, and had too little buffering (or too little speed at
>accepting bytes) to handle more than about two bytes per output-ready
>interrupt.

Hmm, I could have sworn I got burned by some LP11 behavior where the RSX LP:
driver knows for sure that the LP11 can accept characters w/o even waiting
for interrupts in between, up until an LF character (which is when the fun
actually begins).  So it (the driver) stuffs printing characters out w/o
caring about the "ready" bit or any associated interrupt...

>Unless the LP-11 is _really_ dumb and passes all of that stuff off to
>the attached printer,

For the behavior I think I'm remembering to be real, this would have to
be the case.

>in which case the blame really belongs with the
>LN01 (a very early laser printer, something like 6ppm and as big as a
>small desk, also one of the very few write-white printers I've ever
>used).

Write-white?  Did the engineers own stock in a toner company or what?

John Wilson
D Bit