Re: Multiple Printers On 1 Box And Sharing

[Cokey de Percin <fdepercin sc rr com>]

Jim Hale wrote:
> 
> I have an old P233MMX sitting in my garage that I'm thinking about
> setting up as a Printer server. Kind of like a 'fat' HP JetDirect - so I
> can move these printers anywhere I have a network connection since the
> printers are sitting on a roll-around cart.
> 
> Question is, can I have 2 printer ports in the machine (one for my laser
> and one for my Color Inkjet) and be able to share them to Linux and
> Windows (Win2k Pro and XP) machines? I know I can do it with one but I
> haven't seen anything about 2. I'd like to get Red Hat installed and
> configured, remove the monitor, keyboard and mouse and then just access
> the box thru SSH and VNC.
> 
> Has anyone tried this?
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Jim Hale
> ---

Yup, got 3 on one (RH 6.2 with 2.4.18) at the moment with no modification.  
I believe I read that that was the limit without changing something in the 
kernel code, but I haven't confirmed it.  

If you're using an ISA card with manual settings, you shouldn't have much 
of a problem.  Just chuck it in and the system should detect all the ports.  
You will need to be sure you have enough IRQ's/io ports and that are they 
set correctly.  If it's ISA PNP, I'm not sure, but it's probably handled like
the PCI below. 

If you're using a PCI card, my experience is that it's a bit of a different 
ball game.  Since all the add on PCI parallel port boards that I've seen
are PNP, You must determine the IRQ and/or io port on the card that you wish 
to attach to a given lp port using information from the boards manuf. and  
/proc/pci.  By this I mean that it may not be obvious which io port on the card 
is to be used as for a parallel port.  My dual port PCI parallel card shows 
up like this in the /proc/pci:

  Bus  0, device   5, function  0:
    Communication controller: PCI device 9710:9815 (rev 1).
      IRQ 20.
      Master Capable.  Latency=64.
      I/O at 0xfc70 [0xfc77].
      I/O at 0xfc78 [0xfc7f].
      I/O at 0xfc88 [0xfc8f].
      I/O at 0xfc90 [0xfc97].
      I/O at 0xfc98 [0xfc9f].
      I/O at 0xfcb0 [0xfcbf].                                          
 
You must have the manuf. specs to know.  Also, not all PCI parallel/serial cards
are supported, although thanks to Tim Waugh of RH, many (most?) are.  Note also 
that moving a PCI board usually/always (??) changes the io ports.

In either case you must set the IRQ/io ports in your /etc/modules.conf.  Mine
looks like so:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

#
# Current Parallel setup! Be Careful; Very Careful!!
#
# Note: Anytime the PCI parallel card is moved to a different
#       PCI slot, the io ports change.  Check the /proc/pci
#       file for the new ones....
#
alias parport_lowlevel parport_pc
options parport_pc io=0x378,0xfc70,0xfc88 irq=7,none,none      

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

For additional parallel port information see http://www.torque.net/linux-pp.html


Best

Cokey

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F. 'Cokey' de Percin, DBA       Email:
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