[BL] Hard Copy

sindi keesan keesan at sdf.lonestar.org
Sun Feb 4 19:47:51 EST 2007


On Mon, 5 Feb 2007, Greg Mayman wrote:

> On Sun, 4 Feb 2007 15:22:21 +0000 (UTC), sindi keesan wrote:
>
>> If your computer has one parallel port it should be lp0 not lp1.
>
> That sounds reasonable.

>> Can you go into setup and check in BIOS what the parallel port
>> address is?
>
> No I don't think I can see it in BIOS on this computer.
>
>>  Do you have it set to something other than the default?
>
> No I certainly don't. DOS prints quite happily with no fancy fiddlin' to
> make it work.

I have run into a few parallel ports (mostly on laptops or old MGA add-on 
cards) which work perfectly in DOS, for parallel port file transfer, but 
not at all for the same thing in linux.  Maybe your port is a bit 
non-standard and therefore does not work in linux even for printing?

A clue is that linux is finding lp1 (which is LPT2) rather than lp0 
(LPT1), which might mean it has a non-standard address.  (Similarly ttyS0 
is COM1 and ttyS1 is Com2).

Try to find a way to go into setup to see what the address is set to.

You can search on the internet on the computer model number and 'setup' 
for help.  It could be DEL, F1, F2, F10, ESC, or who knows what else, even 
combinations of keys.  Then look for peripherals settings and let us know 
the address and whether it is the default.  If you cannot figure out what 
address is the default, you can set everything to defaults in setup.  (But 
then if you have an internal modem, disable the comport that it is set 
to).

You can also search in google/linux on the computer model number and words 
such as printing and parallel port and lp1, in case other people had the 
same problem.

Is your parallel port onboard or on a separate card?  If it is an ISA 
card, you will definitely have to specify the address if nonstandard and 
maybe even if standard, when you insmod parport_pc.

486s used separate ISA controller-I/O cards which could be set to 
different printer port addresses and IRQs.  Do you have a 486?

Sindi



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