SUMMARY: Serial Printing to Tektronics Color Printer

From: Brad Doyle (doyle@dusty.npt.nuwc.navy.mil)
Date: Tue Apr 23 1996 - 16:28:21 CDT


Thanks to:

    Peter Allan peter.allan@aeat.co.uk
        For sharing his "Summary: Apple LaserWriter II on Sun SS20 using
SunOS 4.1.4" and pointing me toward

    Greg T. Harber gth@cs.sfasu.edu
        Who sent along a working printcaps file for the same.

    Mark S. Anderson anderson@neon.mitre.org
        suggested the command line
                % (stty 9600; cat file.ps) > /dev/ttya
        which did not work.

    Josh Kuperman jkuperma@ogs.state.ny.us
        lamented the difficulty of configuring Tektronix Phasers to work on
anything other than PC's. He did comment that Tektronix Tech support was
very helpful and this eventually led me to document #9432 on their Highly
Automated Library (HAL) web page at URL:
        http://www.tek.com/color_printers/support/HAL/555.html
which gave a printcap file and other hints.

Now, all I need is a command line driven, full-color rasterfile to
postscript converter which allows rescaling. If anybody knows of a good one
please let me know.

My original question, criticized by some for its vagueness was:

I have connected a Tektronix Phaser II PXi color printer to serial port A on
the system motherboard of a SPARK II running SUN OS 4.1.3 and have not been
able to successfully send a PostScript file to it for printing. It is
looking for 9600 Baud, XonXoff, 8-data, no parity signals. Any advice would
be greatly appreciated.

Almost everybody who responded mentioned the need for a null-modem cable,
which I was using. I guess I should have at least mentioned that. However,
I left the question intentionally vague to get the maximum number of
different ways to approach the problem. I was looking for both a printcaps
oriented solution and a direct access tty solution. At least I have one to
start with.

Thanks Sun-Managers

Brad



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