Fast parallel driver for Unix/Xenix AT?

[Dave Remien]

In article <7135 at ki4pv.uucp> tanner at ki4pv.uucp (Dr. T. Andrews) writes:
-In article <256 at bahamut.fsc.com>, jim at bahamut.fsc.com (James O'Connor) writes:
-) My proposed solution is different from Chip's though.  I don't want
-) to see new drivers for old boards, I'd like to see some bright, young
-) engineer come up with a new board.
-My wish list is a little simpler.  I'd settle for a couple of
-one-port para boards if they had some smarts.  I hate like taxes
-to pay an interrupt per character with troff heading to a laser
-printer.  I even find it bad to pay to drive a lousy dot matrix
-printer with my listings, and my fast dot matrix printer is still
-in the shop.

AT&T will sell you (if you can get them to) an IPC-802 board, with 6
serial ports and 2 parallel ports, all run by a Z-80, I think. Make sure
you get the lastest and greatest software if you go this route; earlier
version were definitely buggy. I've also had some bizarre problems with
them as far as what device you power up first; on one board, if you
power up the computer first, all's well, the other the printer has to be
powered up first for the system to come up. Both with AT&T (Olivetti)
computer hardware, HP PaintJet printers.

I'm not pimping for AT&T, I'm not even real happy with them. They're the
hardest folks in the world to buy something from. It might even work
when you get it. Just mentioning that there is such a thing as a smart
parallel port out there in the world.

Good luck.......
-- 
Dave Remien ++*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+* WINCO Computer Engineering Group 
{uunet|bigtex}!pmafire!dave or rzd at inel.gov         "Dave Barry for President"